


Elegy for Emile

by hangdog



Series: The Respawn Conspiracy [3]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Angst, Backstory, Child Abuse, Concentration Camps, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Holocaust, Horror, M/M, Magical Realism, Medical Experimentation, Parent/Child Incest, Racism, Rape, Suicide, Torture, Underage Prostitution, Witchcraft, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-06-27 07:13:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15680550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hangdog/pseuds/hangdog
Summary: The life and times of the boy who would become Spy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: What you are about to read is vile, offensive garbage. Please note the tags.

Two years ago, the German army marched into Paris. They hung their brazen red flags and stark white banners across every landmark and capitol building, from the Tour Eiffel to the Arc de Triomphe. DEUTCHSLAND SIEGT AUF ALLEN FRONTEN bellowed the banners in block capital letters, evoking the strict bark of the Germans as they flaunted their power in parades through the streets. Germany is victorious on all fronts.

Henri refused to leave the city before the occupation, claiming that it was easier to make money in the black market during chaotic times. He ignored Emile’s protests, pulling rank as Emile’s guardian. Emile was too young to understand, Henri claimed. He wasn’t around for the first war. Meanwhile, thousands of refugees walked past them, slowly exiting the city on foot and bicycle, wisely avoiding what was to come.

Six months ago, Henri admitted to Emile that his plan may not have been the most prescient. This war was not as profitable as the last, and their occupiers were far more oppressive. By the time Henri came to his senses, both he and Emile were trapped in the city by their own lack of papers. Living outside of the law as petty criminals and squatters was easier when there were larger crowds in which to blend. As the population trickled out to the countryside, the newly fledged Vichy government focused their vile bureaucracy on those within the cities, demanding extensive identification.

Henri and Emile relied on their unique mode of survival in these lean times. They existed off the grid and worked for crime families in exchange for shelter and food from the black market. During the day, they scammed the remaining citizens out of their ration cards, or simply picked their pockets for any withheld riches. At night, they practiced their highly effective method of burglary, scaling buildings and entering open windows in search of hidden family heirlooms and emergency funds. Emile learned enough German to service soldiers in the brothels for extra money and cigarettes. The German soldiers were the gold mine that Henri anticipated when the war began. They treated Paris as a holiday destination, and they revived the tourism, entertainment, and prostitution industries with their salaries. The Corsican gangsters that ran the brothels at the behest of the German military skimmed generous profits, and they employed Henri and Emile to reclaim money which had slipped through the cracks.

Despite their relationship with the underground criminal milieu, Henri and Emile were a unit first and foremost. They could rely on nobody but each other. Ever since Henri rescued Emile as a child from slave labor in a suit factory, Emile remained his protege. Henri taught him the lucrative arts of theft and fraud. True, Henri expected Emile to provide him with comfort from time to time, but he had always taken care of his ward. Henri kept Emile fed, clothed, and inured to the rules of the world. “Look out for yourself first and foremost, and don't do anything for free.”

Two months ago, when the Germans mandated that every Jew would wear yellow stars on their clothing, Henri saw opportunity. “Jews always have money,” he told Emile. “We just have to find where they’re hiding it. And we must find it quickly, before the police take them away.” The French police performed the bidding of their occupying enemy, enforcing curfews and punishing those Jews that did not flee the country. Henri and Emile benefited from this renewed focus on one segment of the population. If their criminal acts or illegal presence drew the scrutiny of the gendarmes, Emile and Henri would simply draw attention to any Jew in the area.

Yesterday, that particular gambit became impossible when the French police rounded up every Jew in the city and imprisoned them in the Vélodrome d'Hiver, an indoor stadium. Fortunately, Henri had a plan for this eventuality. He knew the gangsters that formed the Carlingue, a thuggish auxiliary to the police that hunted members of the Resistance for the Germans. On many occasions, Henri and Emile delivered payment and services to Raul Savelli, a Corsican. Raul knew everything that was going to happen before it happened. He informed Henri about the upcoming raids, so that Henri and Emile could clear out the coffers of the Jews before the police arrived to steal their hidden savings. Raul made pure personal profit from the scheme. In exchange, Henri convinced Raul to smuggle himself and Emile out of the city. Raul agreed, but he requested one final task of Emile before he fulfilled the bargain.

Twelve hours ago, Emile knelt below a desk and teased Raul’s cock out of his silk trousers. Raul’s fat sausage stank like garlic. Emile rolled his thick foreskin past his flared, spongy cockhead. When Emile hesitated to swallow him down, Raul tapped his leather shoe impatiently.

“Emile,” urged Henri, “do as he says.”

“You know how I like it, boy.” Raul seized Emile by his hair and dragged his face against his sweating groin, burying Emile’s nose in his coarse pubic hair. Emile gripped his thumb in his hand, like Henri had taught him, and distended his jaw around Raul’s shaft. He struggled to relax his throat as Raul’s girth squeezed past his tongue and filled his mouth.

Just as Raul said, Emile had serviced the gangster before, in order to pay off Henri’s various debts. The task was far easier with several years of experience than it was the first time, when Raul delighted in fucking his throat until seed spurted from his nostrils. Henri coached Emile in fellatio like any other trade, ostensibly to raise Emile’s worth as an asset. Now, the lessons were paying off.

Raul grunted in approval and returned his attention to Henri, who stood on the other side of his mahogany desk, wringing his hands over the assorted watches and jewelry that he and Emile had stolen from the interned Parisian Jews. Raul sorted through the bounty, scrutinizing each item. The sounds of clinking chains joined with the sucking smacks of Emil’s mouth around Raul’s cock.

“What’s going to happen to them?” asked Henri, surprising Emile with the affected innocence of his question. Emile and Henri had just discussed the Jews incarcerated outside of Paris at Drancy, as well as the network of trucks and trains that transferred prisoners east. Henri knew as well as anyone about the rumors of death camps in Poland. Jews were not the only people to fall prey to the recent wave of arrests. In France, numerous prison camps were being built to house the growing resistant population. Even established penitentiaries like Fresnes now held more political prisoners than hardened lifetime criminals.

Raul scoffed. “Since when did you care about the Jews, Lapointe?” From below, Emile observed the contempt on Raul’s face as he used Henri’s fake surname, which Henri had chosen to make himself sound authentically French on his forged documentation.

Although Emile could not see Henri, he could hear the helpless shrug in his mentor’s voice. “I just want to know what the Germans are planning. Drancy’s getting full, no?”

Raul held up his hand to silence Henri. His golden rings glinted in the dim light of his office. Raul forced Emile’s mouth back to his crotch and humped his face, smacking the back of Emile’s head against his desk as he pulsed his orgasm down Emile’s throat. At his peak, Raul hissed in pleasure and locked Emile between his thick thighs, trapping him against his cock, engulfing him in the smell of body odor and expensive leather that reminded Emile of his place in the world.

Raul released Emile and relaxed at his desk, slicking back his dark hair. “We’ll get you back to Marseille,” he announced, as if the agreement was contingent on Emile’s ability to bring him to climax. “Maybe you can at last make your pilgrimage to Saint Sara."

Henri cleared his throat as Emile crawled out from under the table and stood by his side. “What about the identity cards?”

“Be ready tomorrow morning.” Raul dismissed Henri, waving his hand and turning back to the pile of stolen goods.

Henri wrapped his arm around Emile’s shoulders, steering him out of the room. Emile was all too happy to leave Raul and exit behind the cafe that served as a cover for Savelli’s illicit activities. The usual group of Carlingue mobsters lingered outside of the back door, smoking precious rare cigarettes and snickering at Henri and Emile.

“If it isn’t the gypsy and the bedbug. How much for the little boy, gypsy?”

Henri ignored the insults as always, but his hand clenched in Emile’s shirt, knotting the fabric against his spine. Their criminal associates called Henri le Manouche _._ Henri ensured through Raul that no official documentation marked him as a gypsy. To be labeled a gypsy would sentence Henri to a similar fate as the Jews: herded into trucks and deported to prison camps for the rest of their short lives. Henri maintained that he was not a real gypsy, and that the nickname merely referred to his dusky skin and his thieving talents. Henri had only approached the gypsies for help once, years ago, after he and Emile had been starving for weeks in winter. They expelled Henri from their circle, calling him a gadjo.

Even though the gypsies rejected Henri from their ranks, the Vichy government and the occupying Germans had different standards of ethnicity. A man’s personal identity was invalid if it did not match the label on his documentation. The Israélites, the Jews that had assimilated into French society over many generations, wore the same stars as the Juifs _,_ the devout refugees from the east. Likewise, Henri would be considered a gypsy if his identity card marked him as such, despite his rejection from the gypsy enclave.

Emile feared his own imprisonment by association. Although he and Henri were not blood, they were inextricably linked, and coincidentally quite similar in appearance, with their slim builds and grey eyes. Everyone assumed that Emile was Henri’s illegitimate son. This common misunderstanding benefited the pair, allowing them to scam countless ignorant targets with elaborate cons. Perhaps Henri had deliberately kidnapped Emile from the suit factory for this reason, after days of casing the textile mill for the child that would best play the role of his offspring.

Implied paternity did not stop Henri from taking what he wanted from Emile. When they returned to their hiding place, an abandoned flat over a derelict bookstore that was raided months ago for inappropriate literature, Henri pinned Emile to the bed and held a glass of ersatz wine to his lips. “Swish,” he ordered. Emile obediently swilled the weak piquette, washing away Savelli’s bitter taste with the prickling fizz of the imitation wine. After they repeated this process three times, Henri kissed Emile and swiped his tongue across his teeth, cleansing his mouth as a cat would groom its kitten.

Emile whined urgently as Henri’s clever tongue revived the shameful arousal that had been flickering in him ever since Raul Savelli looked into his eyes and beckoned him to debase himself under his desk. Emile saw his complicity as a matter of survival. If he squirmed and cried and protested each time Henri sold him, they would never have food to eat. It was better to surrender himself to the act and entreat greater profits with enthusiasm and skill.

Henri sucked Emile’s lower lip raw and manipulated his cock in his hand. “Look at your sweet little prick,” Henri purred against Emile’s throat. “I would do anything for you, Emile,” he promised, sucking bruises into Emile’s neck. “Would you do anything for me?”

“Anything, anything,” Emile whimpered, humping Henri’s hand. Before he finished, Henri released him. Emile was only allowed to climax through Henri’s chosen method. “Please, Henri. Please fuck me.”

“Such a good boy.” Henri peeled Emile’s clothes from his body like the rind of a ripe fruit. He descended on Emile’s prick, sucking him just enough to make Emile gasp and bite his own hands to muffle his cries, before he dragged his tongue to Emile’s hole and cleaned him as he cleaned his mouth, laving inside with indulgent licks. Emile writhed on the bed, holding his legs behind his knees and spreading himself wide, pleading for Henri to tongue fuck him more deeply so that he could come. Each time he approached the edge, Henri withdrew, leaving Emile to beg while he rinsed his mouth with piquette.

When Emile began to weep in outright need, Henri shushed the boy’s cries and lay over him, penetrating him slowly as he folded Emile in half. Emile’s ankles stretched past his head as Henri’s cock pierced through him, finding its home deep within Emile. “ _Mon chaton,_ ” moaned Henri, kissing Emile’s tears away. “I will always be here for you.”

“I love you,” wept Emile, clutching his arms around Henri. His hatred for Henri burned as strongly as his love in that moment, for Henri ensured that Emile had no one else. They were outcasts by Henri’s design. He had taken Emile to be his only companion, and Emile was trapped with him at the end of the world. As a man of sixteen, Emile could have struck out on his own at any other time, but the upheaval of war made it impossible. All of the stateless, paperless refugees were being rounded up. Emile was no exception.

Henri rutted against Emile, returning his sweet words. His stubble grated Emile’s smooth cheek as he bent low over him, embracing Emile as tightly as the boy clung to him. Henri’s long cock jammed against his prostate, milking spurts of seed from Emile that pulled and stuck between their bellies. Henri arched his back and crushed Emile against his chest, muffling Emile’s overstimulated cries with his mouth as he took his pleasure.

Four hours ago, Henri tucked Emile under his chin and lit the same stub of a cigarette that they had been smoking for the last week. They finished it together. Emile recalled how he obtained the cigarettes by sleeping with a German soldier in Pigalle. Henri kissed Emile and thanked him, praising him drowsily, promising him the world when they woke.

Two minutes ago, Emile started at the sound of a motor outside. The curfew forbid driving after dark to everyone but the Germans and the police. He shook Henri awake. Henri’s nostrils flared like a panicked horse as he heard the approaching vehicle. He pushed Emile to the bed, shushing him, before he crept to the window.

“That bastard,” growled Henri. “Raul sold us out.”

Emile’s hands shook as he dressed himself. “Is it the police?”

“Yes.” Henri lingered by the window, baring his nudity.

Emile threw Henri’s shoes at him. “Hurry! We have to run!”

Henri didn’t flinch when the wooden soles struck his back. He turned slowly towards Emile, viewing him with empty eyes.

“There’s nowhere to go,” said Henri. His wrist flicked at the end of his stiff arm, unfolding the blade of his butterfly knife.

“Henri?” Emile backed away, tripping over the bed. Henri leapt on top of him. His knuckles whitened as he raised the knife over Emile.

Downstairs, boots hit the pavement. The French police stormed into the derelict bookstore below the flat.

Emile grabbed Henri’s wrist in both hands, fighting a losing battle against Henri’s superior strength. “Please,” he begged as the knife surged down towards his chest. “Let’s go, let’s run, Henri, please!”

“There’s nowhere to run,” droned Henri. He had defeated himself from within, and he intended to take Emile down with him.

Now, there are boots in the stairwell. Henri’s eyes cut to the door.

Emile knees Henri in the groin. Henri’s grip falters, and Emile seizes the knife from him. The blade is like the sixth finger of Emile’s hand. He turns the point on Henri.

A proud smile revives Henri’s dead expression. “ _Mon chat,_ ” he whispers.

Emile stabs the side of Henri’s neck, severing his artery. In the same instant, the door bursts open, and police flood into the room. They gawk at Emile as he pushes Henri’s hemorrhaging body to the floor.

Emile raises his hands in the air, dropping the knife. He closes his eyes and waits, but they don’t shoot. The French police have orders to deliver all gypsies to the Germans.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. I can't put enough warnings on this content.

With a group of gypsies, Emile is forced into a cattle car bound for Alsace. The other prisoners wear striped outfits marked on the left breast with numbers in oil paint and a black triangle patched below, beside which is painted the letter Z. They are from various states of origin. All are grouped together under the label of Zigeuner, the German word for gypsy. Many have been transferred from a French prison in Montreuil-Bellay. They conjecture about their fate in hushed tones as they scratch their lice ridden scalps. Emile stares out of the slats of the train at the pine forests of the countryside, gulping at gusts of fresh air through the broken wall. In his head, the churning of the train melds with the sound of Henri gurgling through his blood.

The train stops at the base of the Vosges mountains. Emile and the gypsies walk uphill at gunpoint, picking their way over the unfinished roads while German shepherds and soldiers bark at them in one bestial voice. They pass a small village with a ski lodge and an expensive-looking house and continue up the mountain.

The pine forests have been cleared from the top of the hill, baring the field around the prison camp. Emile hesitates outside of the wooden gates, staring transfixed at the disturbing tableau. Three layers of electrified, barbed wire fences encircle the site. Guards glare at them from high in watch towers, rifles at the ready. Three rows of fifteen ramshackle barracks, painted green and patched with mismatched wood planks, rise from the many levels of stone lattices built into the sloping mountainside. On the lowest level, one of these buildings undergoes construction of a new chimney, as a herd of emaciated prisoners struggles up and down the wide lattice stairs with granite rocks in their knobby hands. At the bottom of the hill is a vast pit that brims with brown water along the fence line.

A German shepherd snarls at Emile, snapping and frothing as its handler echoes its threat. Emile hurries to fall in formation with the other new arrivals. They stand at attention to be counted. The rumors imply that this is one of many labor camps that service the local mines. Emile expects to find himself in the same situation that he escaped as a young boy, working grueling hours without pay.

Emile notices two men in black Schutzstaffel uniform staring at him. Unlike the guards, their weapons are holstered. One of them, a square headed man with pale blond hair, wears red rubber gloves that match the armband of his uniform. Emile has seen doctors wear such gloves before. The doctor’s eyes map Emile’s body with such intensity that heat rises in his wind chapped face.

“ _Zigeuner_ ,” says the doctor with the gloves. The other questions his colleague. As the two SS men confer with one another, Emile grows anxiously aware of the silence that stretches around him. He and the men at his sides flinch when one of their number coughs or sneezes, all awaiting punishment for the errant noise.

After deliberation, the doctor approaches Emile. “Are you Manouche?” The doctor speaks perfectly academic French, but Emile gapes as if he doesn’t understand. He is not Manouche, not really.

The doctor shakes his head and comments to his colleague in German. He sounds disappointed, and he turns to go. Emile senses that he will be abandoned to die with the others if he does not distinguish himself.

“Wait,” Emile cries. “Yes. I am. I am Manouche.” The doctor smiles and slaps his partner on the shoulder, as if he has won a bet.

A guard, a hulking brute of a man with a vicious smile on his ugly face, takes Emile by the arm and leads him out of formation towards the barracks. Emil stumbles over the terraces, looking over his shoulder at the lines of gypsies that stare after him until their captors scream again for attention.

The guard shoves Emile into a concrete room at the front of one of the barracks and closes the door behind him. Blood streaks and spatters cover the walls and floor, patchy in places as if someone has tried to rinse the old stains away. In the center of the room is a tile table, attached to a sink. Emile’s knees knock together as he grips the door handle. He is too frightened to open the door and face the guard, and too frightened to stay in the room.

The door opens, making his choice for him. Emil stumbles away. “There you are,” booms the blond doctor, stepping inside.

A younger doctor in red rubber gloves accompanies him. He looks like a tall child in an SS costume. Glasses circle his blue eyes as he stares at Emile, then looks to his superior for guidance. A pang of sorrow twists in Emile’s gut when he remembers how he would look to Henri.

“You can call me Dr. Werner,” the older introduces himself. “You’re the first French gypsy in my personal collection.”

“There’s been a mistake,” Emile responds. “I’m not really a gypsy.”

“Really? So you lied to me?”

Emile swallows and says nothing.

Werner walks past Emile and opens a drawer in the cabinet. Emile cowers when Werner withdraws a pair of long, curved calipers. The two metal bands end in sharp points that could easily pierce Emile’s skin.

Werner laughs. “Foolish boy. I’m just going to measure your skull.” Emile stands, trembling, as Werner stretches the calipers over his head. “Brachycephalic, as I thought.” Werner moves on, quantifying the distance between his eyes, nose, and mouth. He provides running commentary in French, including terminology that Emile doesn’t understand. The younger doctor remains by door, glancing anxiously at Emile and recording on a clipboard the numbers that his superior relays to him. “You are definitely a gypsy,” Werner announces when he is finished with the bizarre procedure.

Emil crosses his arms over his midsection in a feeble attempt to protect himself. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to stand very still while my assistant gives you a shot. Ludwig!” Werner snaps his fingers, and the young doctor approaches, eyes wide behind his glasses. Werner draws a syringe from his pocket and passes it to Ludwig, who accepts it in his trembling hands and turns to Emile.

Emile jumps off the table and shoves past Ludwig. Werner catches him by the arm. Emile twists around, scratching at Werner’s eyes and biting the inside of Werner’s thumb. Werner howls in pain, and Emile breaks free. He flings the door open wide.

A huge, meaty hand clenches around Emile’s throat. Emile kicks and gasps for air as the giant lifts him off his feet, squeezing until Emile’s clawing hands go limp. The SS guard questions Werner in German.

“ _Sehr gut,_ Jung,” Werner praises the guard. He goes on to say something else that compels Jung to throw Emile on the ground. Jung closes the door, standing inside the office with his gun drawn.

Trapped between the doctors and the guard, Emile’s self-preservation still forces him to crawl away. He cowers in the corner, certain that he will die in this cold tile room.

Werner gestures towards Emile and issues an order to Ludwig. The young doctor doesn’t move. He looks anxiously at Emile before he turns to Werner and pleads with him.

While the two doctors argue in German, Jung points his pistol at Emile and leers at him, enjoying Emile’s fear as he flattens himself against the wall. The Luger appears comically small in the guard’s oversized hands, but Emile is unable to appreciate the absurdity of the image.

Werner raises his voice and shouts over Ludwig, who continues to protest in a shaking voice. “Come here,” Werner orders. Emile doesn’t comply. He can still taste Werner’s blood in his mouth. He prepares to bite the doctor even harder.

“You’re only making this worse for yourself.” Werner’s exasperation fails to convince Emile, who stays where he is. “Jung!”

The guard grabs a handful of Emile’s shirt and lifts him to his feet. When Emile tries to fight back, Jung slams Emile’s temple into the wall, leaving a red stain. Emile’s head hangs past his shoulders as Jung drags him into the center of the room. Emile’s shirt cuts into his armpits with increasing pressure, until the fabric splits apart, baring his knobby back.

“My assistant likes you,” Werner whispers to Emile. “You will assist me in teaching him a lesson about clemency.” Werner unbuckles his belt, sliding the black leather from the loops of his jodhpurs.

The metal buckle cracks across Emile’s spine, leaving fire in its wake. Emile lunges against the cage of Jung’s arms and chest, but the guard holds him still as Werner beats him with the belt, until Emile can only scream and thrash in a vain struggle to escape the relentless lashing. Werner grunts with each swing of his arm, using his full strength to bury the sharp prong of the buckle into Emile’s back, ripping open the skin from the contact point as the lash withdraws. Emile fears that Werner won’t stop until his bones show through his flesh.

Emile knows that he’s crying, but he hears someone else sobbing as well. He doesn’t recognize who it is until Werner pauses to switch the belt from one arm to the other. Ludwig stands to the side, holding his glasses in one hand and covering his eyes with the other.

Ludwig’s tears disgust Emile. His hatred only grows as Werner punishes him for Ludwig’s decision. He doesn’t want Ludwig’s pity, not if it won’t save him. He wants all of this to be over.

Finally, Werner tires. Emile lifts his head warily when the strikes cease to fall on his back, only to scream out a ragged cry of shock as Werner delivers a final blow. Emile sags in Jung’s grip, struggling to breathe. Blood drips down his back, soaking the oversized waistband of his filthy trousers.

Werner speaks in harsh, clipped German. Ludwig stammers as he responds. Werner hands something to Jung, who pockets it, and then the pair turns to go. Ice grips Emile’s heart as he realizes that he is about to be left alone with Jung.

Emile reaches for them, straining to escape Jung’s arms. “Wait! Please, don’t let him kill me!” Werner glares at Emile, but Ludwig can’t look at him.

Emile shrieks as Jung pins him to the floor on his blistered back. Jung opens his belt. Perversely, Emile is grateful when the guard doesn’t beat him with it, even as he guesses the more likely alternative. Emile closes his eyes in resignation when Jung rips the last scraps of Emile’s clothing from his legs and forces himself between them. His experience with Henri doesn’t spare him from the agony of dry penetration. Jung grunts and huffs in his ear, pumping fiercely inside of Emile, growling comments that turn Emile’s empty stomach despite his lack of understanding.

Jung doesn’t last very long, but to Emile, the minutes stretch into eternity. As Jung inflicts his sweating bulk on Emile, Emile tries to escape into his thoughts. He can only think of Henri. Henri, holding him closely, promising to care for him. Henri, making him feel so deliciously good with his mouth, before he teaches Emile to do the same. Henri, looming over him with a knife in his hand, his face void of expression, a mask of death.

Jung drives up against Emile with greater violence, pushing his back across the floor. Emile’s torn anal passage clenches in feeble resistance around Jung as the guard pumps his seed into Emile’s belly. Emile tries to keep still below Jung, so as not to provoke him. There is nowhere to look but up at the giant man crushing him to the ground, at the hateful face with its hawkish profile and jutting chin.

Jung hangs over Emile with his limp cock stuffed inside. He continues to taunt Emile in German, baring his teeth. Emile recognizes that Jung wants to frighten him, and so he submits to his misery and bawls like a child. His hiccoughing and shuddering seem to appease Jung. Emile dry heaves as Jung’s cock slides out of his bleeding hole. He plays dead on the floor, until Jung grabs his arm and sticks him with the syringe that Werner handed him before he left. The pinch is nothing compared to everything else that Emile has just endured, but he yelps in panic all the same.

Emile has no time to rest. Jung leads him, naked and smeared with blood and semen, outside of the barracks. A pathetic gaggle of prisoners stand in a long line that stretches out of the door of the latrine. Emile is shocked to see that all of the other men are now as naked as he. Despite the apparent equality among them, Emile receives knowing, prying looks when the other prisoners discover the milky red fluids dripping past his knees.

In the cramped washroom, prisoners check the line of new arrivals by thrusting lamps at their scalps, beards, armpits, chests, and groins to check for lice, before lathering and shaving every strand of hair. Emile cringes in shame when he is unable to hide what has happened to him, but the hollow eyed skeleton that shaves him barely seems to notice or care about the evidence of his rape. He snaps a terse, foreign phrase at Emile that is probably an order to be still. The barber seems pleased that Emile has little pubic or armpit hair, and he swipes the razor hastily over Emile’s skin to clear his nascent fuzz. Emile hears many different languages, spoken in hushed, hurried conversations. A well fed prisoner, wearing an armband that marks him as a sort of inferior guard, strikes the wall with a truncheon and screams at them all to hurry.

The cold shower is a blessing to Emile, even if he must jostle for space with dozens of other stinking men, most larger and older than himself, some of whom lie on the filthy floor as if lacking the strength to stand. Emile sheds tears of relief as he is able to wash away the remnants of Jung.

After the shower, Emile dons his striped uniform and stands beside the gypsies again. His feet numb inside of his wooden shoes as they wait in the cold. The count takes hours. The prisoner-guards, which Emile learns are called kapos, deliver work assignments. Emile mentions that he can sew, and this spares him from digging in the mines or constructing the chimney down the hill. He is sent to one of the scrappy barracks, where he sits daily among rows of other prisoners in an assembly line, braiding rubber ropes that ultimately become protective nets for German war ships. Many of his fellow weavers are visibly injured or infirm. Having suffered the conditions outside, they are reassigned to less strenuous duties.

Emile hears the man on his left arguing in French with someone else. “It’s a furnace,” he says, speaking of the building that undergoes construction at the bottom of the hill. “It’s meant to heat the showers.”

“Do you think they are building all of that just to heat our water?” whispers the other prisoner. “It’s a crematorium.”

Three times a day, they suck down a pint of watery soup or devour a slice of bread. It’s not enough to feed a mouse. The workers receive extra crumbs, and those who cannot work receive none. Most of the food is lost as diarrhea and vomit among the stacked beds in the overcrowded prisoner barracks. Emile notices that the most feeble prisoners, those stick figures who can barely rise from their own beds, are often too weak to chew or swallow the scraps of food they are given by their friends.

He tries to steal bread from one of these invalids: an old man with a red Italian insignia whose shoulders jut like a clothes hanger in his striped jacket. Emile picks the wrong mark. The old man has two young friends who arrived in the prison after Emile, and they are not as starved yet. They toss Emile to the ground and kick his ribs and belly with the brutal wooden toes of their clogs until they run out of energy and simply scream themselves hoarse, calling him a gypsy son of a whore,  _“Zingaro figlio di puttana!”_

Emile’s vast, lumpy purple bruises only worsen over the weeks. Breathing is agony. As he hunches in the sewing block, weaving supplies for war, he takes his mind off of his pain and hunger with the fantasy that sustained him during his imprisonment in the suit factory as a child. In his mind, he designs his own suits, sharp and slick, expertly bespoke to his adult frame. He has always imagined that he would grow to resemble Henri, broad through the shoulders and narrow through the waist. In this way, Henri always worms into Emile’s thoughts, no matter how fiercely he focuses his attention elsewhere.

Emile adjusts the projected measurements for his future suits as his body progressively wilts away like the others, trimming centimeter by centimeter. He reassures himself that he can trick the eye with the silhouette in order to look fuller than he is. He can add volume with a waistcoat. Most importantly, everything will be made of silk, the finest silk in the world.

Over several days, a headache builds from a minor annoyance to persistent agony, spoiling Emile’s reverie. He has been feeling feverish for the past week, and now his head is killing him. He hunches over his work, briefly closing his eyes for just a second’s rest. He screams when a bludgeon strikes the table next to him, shocking him awake as the kapo screams at him, threatens to send him to the mines, threatens to have him shot. Emile picks up the rope in his trembling hands and works as quickly as he can, half-blind from the pain.

That night is no easier. Emile lays in the straw of his bunk, clutching his palms to his temples to keep his pounding head from exploding, sucking in the foul air of the death and sickness crushed around him, alternately blazing with fever and shivering with freezing cold. At the morning roll call, he sways on his feet and collapses on the ground in the center of the line.

Emile expects to be executed on the spot, but he should have known better than to expect relief. A kapo drags him to the infirmary, where prisoner-medics fight futile battles for their hideous half dead charges. The medics bandage the swollen legs that dangle like dead branches from soiled, reeking mattresses, or swab flakes of dried saliva from the puffy lips of invalids that stare unseeing beyond the barracks, beyond the prison, into eternity.

One of these medics is French. When he learns of Emile’s fever, he bluntly orders Emile to remove his shirt. Emile shivers as he strips himself, expecting to be groped, but the medic only studies the spreading rash on Emile’s chest and harrumphs.

“Typhus,” declares the medic. “Follow me, gypsy boy.”

The typhus ward is a separate barracks, but these prisoners are in no better shape than the others. Spotted red rashes, identical to Emile’s except for the scabrous results of constant scratching, scour their limbs and bodies. The rail-thin monsters in human masks moan insensibly in varying stages of delirium, twitching in puddles of their own watery feces. One lays unmoving. When the medic sees this, he curses and turns away.

“I don’t want to be here,” says Emile as the medic leaves, shutting the door behind him. All of the beds are occupied. Emile waits by the door, fearing that he will receive the dead man’s place. His suspicions are confirmed when the French medic returns with another prisoner. They haul the frail corpse on to a canvas stretcher and flip the mattress to its other side before they carry him away.

Emile won’t sit on the bed until the waste has dried. He squats by the wall, not touching the damp ground with his buttocks, balancing his weight on the heels of his feet. He leans against the wall and closes his eyes.

“Gypsy boy,” says the French medic, shocking him awake. The barracks is now dark, and the moaning throughout the infirmary is quieter. “The Sturmbannführer is here for you.”

Emile catches the wall for balance and looks up blearily. Standing beside the medic is Werner, flanked by his two pets: Ludwig, the craven doctor; and Jung, the rabid dog.

“We meet again, Lapointe,” Werner greets him, shocking Emile with Henri’s surname. It must be written in his prison documentation. “On your feet.”

The dead man’s bed suddenly seems more appealing than whatever Werner has planned. Emile looks at the French medic in a stupid attempt to garner sympathy from his countryman. He should have known that the medic would only turn away again, but it hurts all the same.

“Hurry up,” barks Werner.

Jung seizes Emile by the arm and lifts him off the ground. He drags Emile past the rows of dead and dying, into the crisp autumn air.


	3. Chapter 3

Werner presents a thick woolen blanket to Emile, stunning him with the benevolent gesture, before they load into a light duty pickup truck. Jung drives. Emile sits by Werner and Ludwig in the truck bed. He clutches the blanket around himself and tries not to imagine what will come next.

Werner wants to talk in French. “We won’t be going far,” he says to Emile, his booming voice preventing Emile from falling asleep as they descend the slope. “I have repurposed a farm by le Struthof for my experiments.” The prisoners call the camp le Struthof in reference to the small village two kilometers downhill, which hosts the ski lodge and the fancy house that Emile and the gypsies passed by on their arrival. Emile searches the bare slopes as Werner continues to boast. “Now, you will be interested to see what I have accomplished with the space.”

Emile is not interested. He has no hope that this farm will be an improvement from the rest of the prison, especially if Werner and Jung are there to torment him. Werner continues to impose conversation upon Emile as Jung slowly navigates the newly constructed road and pulls aside to let other vehicles pass. Emile can barely pay attention for his headache. When he finally gives in to his weakness and clutches his head in his hands, Ludwig speaks, whispering to Werner in German.

“How compassionate my assistant is,” remarks Werner flatly. “He wants to give you aspirin. It will make no difference. There is no cure for typhus, and your case is terminal. You are going to die, Lapointe."

The casual cruelty of the pronouncement, weighted so by the doctor’s confident expertise and the use of Henri’s surname, brings stinging tears to Emile’s eyes. He tries to blink them away before they fall.

Werner laughs. “Then again, you may not. Let’s see if he’s good enough to save you. _Nur zu,_ Aron,” he addresses Ludwig, cocking his eyebrow in challenge.

Ludwig flinches at the sound of what is apparently his own name. He timidly presents Emile with a tablet and a slice of bread in the center of his palm. His manner reminds Emile of a child feeding a farm animal. Emile wants to keep Ludwig on his side, but he still glares as he snatches both items, swallowing them together. The bread disappears so quickly that he nearly forgets it was there at all, and it has little effect on his gnawing hunger.

Ludwig reaches out with more bread, but Werner intercepts the food before Emile can take it in hand. He rebukes Ludwig. The younger doctor stammers his disagreement, and Werner repeats himself more harshly. Ludwig, the coward, doesn’t try to feed Emile again. Emile focuses on his empty stomach on the entirety of the drive, paradoxically hating Ludwig for his kindness. It would have been better if Ludwig did not even try, instead of taunting Emile with false hope.

The farmhouse is a small distance away from the ski lodge and the villa. German cars and trucks line the road. Another, less handsome building stands near the ski lodge, and a group of SS men conspire with one another by its open door. Werner leans out of the truck and greets a pair of soldiers in the street. They salute him as Jung drives past, snapping their heels and thrusting their arms in the air like clockwork automatons.

Werner pushes Emile out of the truck when they arrive at the farm. The house sits alongside a barn with an empty row of stables. The massive buildings could shelter dozens of people within their timber-framed walls. Emile is not allowed to look for long, as Werner hurries him past the dirt path into the wooden doors of the house.

A prisoner with a Z by his black triangle stands in the entrance hall, among cozy furniture and knitted blankets and other remnants of the Alsatian family that once lived there. Werner speaks to him in German. The gypsy frowns at Emile and takes him by the arm into a washroom with a blessed, incredible, steaming bath. The clean space is such a relief from the prison camp showers, with men dying underfoot as Emile forces himself to endure the cold water, that Emile doesn’t mind when the gypsy fondles his cock as he washes him. Emile clutches the sides of the porcelain tub, biting his lip and rocking his balls into the gypsy’s calloused palm. The gypsy’s broad, rough finger spears Emile open and crooks inside of him. Pleasure wracks Emile’s body, stirring a cry from deep within that makes the gypsy flinch away and shush him frantically.

The warning comes too late. Jung slams open the door and seizes the gypsy by his shirt, ripping his hand out of Emile. The gypsy screams and begs as Jung pulls him away, down the hall. Emile hears Werner yelling after Jung in German. Werner shouts at Emile, “Shave yourself!”

Emile thought that he was done with the daily shaving ritual. Still, he apparently must keep himself hairless, even though the typhus fleas have already bitten him. He idles in the bath, frustrated by the gypsy’s interrupted attentions and masturbating without result, before he admits defeat and takes the straight razor in hand. He winces as he awkwardly maneuvers the blade around the fine stubble on his groin, nicking his skin. When he finishes scraping his body clean, he leaves the water, now tepid, and wraps himself in the offered towel. He goes to the mirror to shave his face and scalp.

A sallow, hollow cheeked specter stares grimly back at him. Puffy purple skin sags below its frightful red eyes, with irises like two gray discs floating in pools of blood. Chapped, swollen lips rim its yellow teeth. Its neck is a mere twig connected to the sharply cornered box of its jaw and the vulnerable dome of its stubbled skull. Spotted rashes spiral out from the center of its jutting rib cage, mottling its skin with red sores and black scabs. How could this wretch have appealed to the gypsy, to Jung, or to anyone else?

Emile doesn’t want to look at himself anymore. He hurries with the razor, wincing as he cuts himself in his rush. When he finishes the task and opens the washroom door, Werner, Jung, and the gypsy are gone. Only Ludwig remains. He bears a new uniform, a different blanket, and, most importantly, a plate of food. Emile has to force himself not to snatch the bread, cheese, and sausage at once. Ludwig silently leads Emile to a private room. It was formerly someone’s bedroom and now it is Emile’s personal cell. He even has his own bucket and mattress. Ludwig leaves him to eat and locks the door from the outside.

With a full belly, Emile collapses on the dry mattress and wraps himself in his new blanket. For the first time since his imprisonment began, he is alone. Even his headache has abated, owing to both the meal and Ludwig’s aspirin. Emile does not dare to hope that his situation will improve any further, but relief from pain is almost as good as happiness.

Despite the house’s solid walls and warm interior, despite the food, and despite Ludwig’s daily visits, Emile’s condition grows worse over the following week. The typhus rash spreads from his chest and consumes his entire body like the poor souls in the hellish infirmary up the mountain. Emile spends his days slipping in and out of feverish delirium. He scours his itching sides, until Ludwig clips his fingernails and straps soft knitted gloves around Emile’s hands, preventing him from excoriating his wounds.

Ludwig is there every day, although he is behind a sterile layer of protective clothing and rubber gloves. Ludwig bundles Emile in blankets when he complains of cold, and he dabs the sweat that pours from Emile’s body as the fever burns him up. If Emile messes himself or overturns the bucket, Ludwig changes his bedding and cleans the floor. Ludwig murmurs constantly in German and clumsy French, apparently attempting to soothe him. Emile refuses to speak to him until he grows too sick to be stubborn.

“Fix me,” he demands of Ludwig. When Ludwig mumbles excuses, Emile bares his teeth and clutches Ludwig’s white coat, hanging on it to drag the doctor towards him. “I demand it.” Ludwig lifts his eyebrows. Emile, too, is surprised by his own presumption, but Ludwig’s cowed, submissive nature makes it easy to be forceful with him despite his apparent status in the SS. “I will not die because you are a bad doctor.”

Ludwig’s pale cheeks flush pink. “I am not a doctor,” he admits. “Not yet.”

The conversation ends there. Emile loses faith completely in Ludwig. He ignores Ludwig when he enters his cell the next day, rolling to face the wall. “I have an idea,” Ludwig insists. Emile refuses to respond to this obvious lie. If Ludwig had a cure, he would have brought it with him by now. Ludwig stomps his boot in frustration. “I will bring it soon!”

Emile keeps his mouth shut. Ludwig stomps a final time and slams the door. Ironically, Emile hates him far less when he’s angry. At least he isn’t simpering and appeasing, attempting to befriend Emile as if he is not a Nazi charlatan.

Emile’s fever returns that night. By the time Ludwig returns in the morning, Emile barely knows that he’s there. In his delirium, he hallucinates that Ludwig enters his room holding a glass vial that is stopped with a piece of cork. Beads of white latex smear the inside of the vial, viscous as poppy milk. The substance pulses with preternatural light and emits vapor that swirls within the glass. The vapor rises like smoke when Ludwig removes the cork, filling the room with a faint, coppery odor. Ludwig collects a sample on the index finger of his glove. He pushes his finger past Emile’s chapped, yielding lips and rubs the latex on his gums, instantly numbing them.

The effect is soporific. Emile is not sure if he is sleeping or not, but he is surely dreaming, because at the same time he is seeing the Germans march through his city, and he is standing by Henri, and he is asking incessantly, Can’t we leave? Can’t we leave now? Please, can’t we leave together and go somewhere else?

“There is nowhere to go,” answers Ludwig.

Emile blinks through his tears. Henri’s face changes into Ludwig’s. Ludwig wipes Emile’s wet face with a dry cloth. He is always wearing his red rubber gloves, so as not to be contaminated by Emile, but his touch is gentle despite the multiple barriers between them.

Emile tries to dwell on his hatred of Ludwig. Nothing comes to him but dim, hazy acceptance of his situation, of Ludwig’s friendship. Perhaps Henri’s memory has confused him into surrender. He murmurs, “ _Merci, docteur._ ”

Ludwig’s smile looks so strange to Emile, too big for Ludwig’s long face. It’s as if Ludwig has forgotten how to do it. Emile is not sure if he still has the capability himself. He weakly mimics the expression, twitching the corners of his mouth upwards, before he closes his eyes and returns to the past.

Fever dreams twist Emile’s sense of time. Henri’s presence blends with Ludwig’s, so that the novice doctor frequently appears in the Paris of Emile’s memories. He takes Henri’s place, standing awkwardly in his oversized SS uniform like one photograph cut and taped to another. Although the two men could not be more different in every way, they are similar in one aspect: Emile wants desperately to loathe them, and yet he cannot.

The next morning, Emile’s fever has broken. Ludwig confirms, his entire body wriggling with puppyish excitement, that Emile will recover, but Emile does not believe him until he witnesses the rash beginning to subside across his body. He occupies himself now by walking in circles around his room, using the legs that he had neglected in anticipation of his own demise. He is moved into the next room and given another uniform, marked with the same triangle and number, while his former bed and clothing are removed and burned.

The rash is nearly gone when the door opens one night to reveal, not Ludwig, but Werner. Emile’s excitement to see his friend dies instantly at the sight of the senior doctor. “Come along, Lapointe. Now that you’ve been rehabilitated, I have something to show you.”

Emile walks cautiously alongside Werner through the wide halls of the farm house, his feet silent in their wool socks next to the clipped tread of Werner’s boots. Werner exits the house and leads Emile across the grass to the adjacent barn. Inside the barn, Emile hears the humming of machinery and the churning of liquid. Then, louder still, the anguished cries of a man in pain. Emile freezes, frightened, as Werner opens the tall timber doors. He pushes Emile through the threshold.

A single electric bulb dangles from the rafters. Its light barely touches the cavernous evening darkness of the barn. Below it, a large, glass-walled vat lies horizontally in the center of the scuffed wooden floors, empty save for the viscous fluid that bubbles within. Dozens of metal pipes travel the floor from the vat to a metal box, which houses several pairs of pumping pistons and valves that circulate the fluid. A ladder beside the control panel leads up to an empty hayloft.

Another moan, softer now, draws Emile’s attention to one of the open stables. He can barely see within, and he doesn’t trust his eyes at first: how can he be sure that he is truly seeing a man bound to an X-shaped wooden cross, suspended so that his feet are above his head? He looks closer and recognizes the gypsy that molested him in the bath when he first arrived at the farm. Beside him, Ludwig and Jung stand guard on opposite sides of the stable. Jung holds his pistol at the ready; Ludwig leans against the wall and covers his mouth, looking as though he may be sick. He cringes when he sees Emile standing by the stable.

“Aren’t you happy, Lapointe?” Werner asks, slapping Emile’s back. “We’re about to rid the world of this animal forever.”

The gypsy’s dark face is maroon with accumulated blood. He doesn’t have the strength to fight the metal cuffs that bind him, inverted, to the cross. White flashes around his black irises as he pleads in German.

“ _Nur zu,_ Aron.” Werner kicks a bucket across the floor. The metal container skids to a halt below the gypsy’s head.

Ludwig clasps the black handle of a dagger in a sheath at his belt, but he doesn’t draw the blade. He looks at Emile and speaks desperately to Werner in German, proclaiming over and over that he “can’t do it.”

Werner heaves a sigh and beckons to Jung. As Jung seizes Emile and strips him above the waist, Werner unbuckles his belt.

Ludwig falls to his knees and grasps Werner’s coat like a pitiful child. Werner kicks him aside and shouts in German until Ludwig cowers on the floor. Werner yells again. Ludwig reluctantly lifts his head, turning his gaze to Emile, evidently ordered to watch.

“I told him that he can spare you from punishment if he simply follows my orders,” snarls Werner in French, wrapping the end of the belt around his hand, “and still he refuses.”

Emile’s back has healed since the first beating. The pain is as fresh as if it had never happened before. He tries not to scream too loudly, tries not to give Werner the joy of hearing his anguish, tries to spare Ludwig from the unfair consequences of Werner’s manipulations, and fails on all fronts. By the time Werner is finished, Emile can barely breathe through his wracking sobs.

Jung continues to hold Emile in place as Werner and Ludwig confer again. Now, Ludwig draws the dagger, gripping it with white knuckles while Werner speaks softly to him. Ludwig grimaces, hesitating, until Werner makes as if to strike Emile again; at the threat, Ludwig obediently approaches the gypsy.

The gypsy’s bleeding wrists and ankles twist frantically in the metal cuffs as Ludwig stands over him with the extended blade. In the darkness, the edge of the knife gleams with uncanny light. Silence presses around the men like a shroud, until the only sound is of Ludwig steeling himself with a slow, shuddering breath.

The gypsy opens his mouth in a final plea. Ludwig’s knife severs his throat before he can make a sound. The clean cut gapes like a second mouth in the gypsy’s neck, baring the neatly severed edges of his windpipe and arteries. Blood pours past his chin and pools in the metal bucket below his head.

Jung’s grip bruises Emile’s arms. He pulls Emile against his huge body, jutting his erection into Emile’s hip through his coat. Emile winces in disgust as Jung rocks against him.

Werner praises Ludwig in the same soft, stern voice while Ludwig struggles to contain his tears. He continues to speak to Ludwig as he glances over to Jung and Emile. Werner dismisses them with a wave of his hand, and Jung swiftly removes Emile from the barn.

They don’t make it back to the house. Jung pushes Emile to the ground outside and fucks him in the light of the full moon. Beyond merely achieving sexual release, Jung wants torture Emile. He grinds his knuckles into Emile’s shredded back, growling threats into his ear. When Emile begins to weep again, Jung mocks him with laughter and stinging slaps to his buttocks.

Emile doesn’t have the option of playing dead. If he doesn’t perform his fear adequately enough for Jung, the guard hits him until he screams. There is no one to hear him, and no way to escape. Emile has no choice but to lay his weaknesses bare, exposing his vulnerabilities for Jung to exploit, until Emile can’t remember a time when he wasn’t being brutalized for Jung’s gratification.

Jung sprays his seed across Emile’s back, stinging in his open wounds. The insult alone forces a humiliated groan from deep within Emile. Hearing this, Jung laughs again and kicks Emile over with his boot, rolling him onto his back in the grass.

Emile knows better than to resist as Jung leans over him, but he can’t stop himself from flinching away as Jung grasps his cock. Jung’s giant hand dwarfs Emile’s genitals. He could castrate Emile with one squeeze. As Jung begins to pump Emile’s shaft, his painful grip forces blood into Emile’s cock, and Emile whimpers in shame when he grows erect.

Jung stretches Emile’s penis out from his body until Emile wails in panic. Jung’s ministrations vary from tight to vicelike in intensity, and Emile prays for release before Jung actually crushes him. He tries to summon a helpful fantasy to mind, but he is completely empty of joy and desire. His erection sustains only through the sheer, overwhelming sensation of pain that Jung continues to wreak upon him.

Eventually, Emile issues a pathetic spurt of seed that crawls up from his balls and burns out of his pisshole, dribbling past Jung’s fingers. Jung wipes his soiled hand on Emile’s face and shoves his fingers into Emile’s mouth.

Emile tastes Henri.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to ScrapThat, who inspired a chain reaction of edits and rewrites that improved this chapter's plot and ultimately helped clarify a theme of the story. Thank you, ScrapThat, and thanks to everyone else for reading.

From that point, Emile’s life follows a regretfully predictable pattern. He remains locked in the cell with his mattress and bucket until Werner or Jung comes to remove him. They only take him into the barn once a month, when the moon is full. There, he watches Ludwig slaughter gypsy after gypsy, gathering their blood in buckets, and then transferring their bodies to the pumping vats full of fluid. After this process, Jung always takes Emile away to hump out his death-fueled arousal.

When there is no ritual to perform, Emile is tasked with cleaning the makeshift laboratory in the house. Most of the rooms on the ground floor have been cleared out and repurposed. Emile isn’t allowed into the rooms that house fragile glass equipment, such as beakers and vials and burners and spinning implements. Only Werner attends these experimental spaces. The so-called operating rooms see more activity. There is no surface on which Ludwig and Werner won’t lay a fresh cadaver. Emile spends most of his time mopping blood and gore from wooden floors that absorb the stink of death into their pores and belch it out in dampness.

Ludwig and Werner work together constantly on bodies from the camp, cutting and dissecting, liberating parchment thin flesh from brittle bone. The majority are gypsies, though not all; however, the gypsies arrive with the most unusual injuries. Many of the gypsies have visible wounds that likely contributed to their untimely deaths. Their skin was horrifically mutilated in purposeful chemical burns, or their flesh had been cut open to excise healthy bone and tissues for sampling. Ludwig appears to be tasked with studying the post-mortem effects of the numerous experiments that Werner and his associates inflict on the inmates up the mountain.

Werner instructs Ludwig with pompous enthusiasm, strolling in circles around the gaunt corpses and indicating parts of their mutilated anatomy with imperious sweeps of his hand. Ludwig accepts this arrogance and hangs on every word, obnoxiously enthusiastic about his gruesome education. Emile notices that it is much easier for the coward to enjoy his work when he does not have to perform the killings himself.

Ludwig isn't the same after the first bloodletting ritual. Emile barely knows Ludwig, and he is still disturbed by his cold shift in demeanor. Ludwig refuses to acknowledge Emile’s existence. If Emile stands within eyesight, Ludwig turns his back. Strange, how Emile misses Ludwig, when at first he wanted nothing to do with him. Ludwig’s clumsy French and kind gestures were the only scraps of levity in Emile’s world. For this reason, Emile has no opportunity to ask Ludwig about the significance of the bleeding rituals, and he doesn’t dare ask Werner for fear of being the next gypsy on the cross. If Ludwig has moved past his attachment to Emile, then there may be no point in keeping him alive.

Without Ludwig’s friendship, Emile’s days run together in a blur of horror and suffering, punctuated by Werner’s cruel demonstrations, Jung’s vicious attacks, and the mysterious rituals that Ludwig performs on the full moon. So many bodies, so much senseless cruelty and death; it is easier for Emile to turn off his mind and focus on the demands of survival. Although the seasons change, and the natural world continues to breathe around him, he feels stuck in the routine. A family of doves roosts outside of his window for several weeks before leaving at the first snowfall. One white dove remains, sleeping on the roof beyond his cell, glowing in the light of the waxing moon.

The early winter’s day begins like any other. Jung kicks open the door to Emile’s cell and screams at him to mop the floor in the laboratory. As he scours blood and waste from the wood, he hears cries and struggling from the room adjacent. A live prisoner was brought to the farm today. Most of the subjects have been dead on arrival. Emile purposely stays hidden, fearing what he will be made to witness if he is spotted.

In the end, he doesn’t have a choice. Werner barks his surname, and Emile enters the operating room at once, so as to avoid Jung’s eager punishment. Ludwig, as ever, does not look at Emile; he is too distracted by the prisoner struggling on the metal table in front of him, pinned down at the shoulders by Jung. The prisoner is a barrel chested Polish gypsy, once a strong man, now wasted to bone.

Werner hands a familiar syringe to Ludwig. “ _Proszę_ ,” the prisoner begs, searching for sympathy in Ludwig’s eyes.

None remains. Ludwig stabs him in the neck and depresses the plunger, pumping poison into his artery. The prisoner gurgles and spasms in Jung’s grip before he collapses on the table. Emile covers his nose and mouth as a reflex, but the prisoner has nothing inside of his bowels to release.

Jung steps aside, and Ludwig takes charge of the operation at once. He rolls his sleeves to his elbow, arranges the prisoner’s body on the slab, and guts him from neck to groin. Piece by piece, Ludwig empties the steaming torso. Emile has seen many Ludwig perform many autopsies, and with shocking speed and efficiency, but never on one so freshly deceased. The man’s heart continues to pulse as Ludwig dissects him. Emile’s stomach clenches in horror when he realizes that the syringe was not poison, but sedative. The prisoner is still alive—until, at last, Ludwig cuts out his heart.

Emile glances at Werner. While Ludwig’s face is blank, Werner’s eyes dance with pride. Fatherly adoration softens his smile. In a sick way, Emile envies their relationship. Ludwig may have every reason to hate Werner, but they seem attached to one another regardless. Much of Ludwig’s mannerisms resemble Werner’s, from his maniacally affected cheer to the way he stands with his hands clasped behind his back. Although Ludwig and Werner are clearly not related by blood, the two appear to be a demented sort of family.

Emile tries not to think about family, although little else comes to mind when he feels so alone. That night in his cell, he stares out of the window at the dove roosting on the roof, wondering where the bird’s family has gone, why they left him in the snow.

Keys in the lock startle him. His heart clenches up like a knot in his chest. Jung usually doesn’t bother him in his cell, but maybe his appetite is growing in anticipation of the full moon. He huddles against the wall as the door swings open.

“Sorry,” Ludwig says, stepping inside and closing the door. Emile notices that he left the key in the lock. “I came to talk.”

“Just to talk? You don’t need my blood?”

Ludwig winces in guilt, telling Emile everything he needs to know before he speaks another word. “That is what I...please, don’t panic.”

Emile’s mouth runs dry. “Say it,” he demands.

“You are next.” Ludwig covers his mouth, speaking through his fingers. “In the barn.”

Emile surprises himself with a dark, smug laugh. “I knew it,” he murmurs. “You’re going to kill me.”

“No! No, I want to help.” Ludwig approaches him, hands held up as if in surrender. “It is _ein_ very specific ritual. If I do not do it perfect, the batch is ruined.”

“What are you talking about?”

Ludwig reaches into the lining of his coat and withdraws a black cloth bag. The dark fabric only somewhat masks a strange white glow within. Emile’s eyes widen as Ludwig reveals the glass vial from Emile’s febrile hallucinations.

It’s real. The latex within the vial casts prisms of rainbow light on to the walls between the shadows of Ludwig’s fingers. Trapped vapor swirls within the small container. Emile can nearly smell the acrid odor that heralded his recovery from typhus.

“It will heal anything,” Ludwig promises.

“What is it?” Emile reaches for the vial.

Ludwig keeps out of reach, backing away. “Werner makes the latex with the gypsies’ blood.” Emile shudders as his fears are confirmed. “If I give it to you before the ritual, you won’t die. You won’t even feel any pain.”

Emile scowls. “I don’t believe you. This is a trick. You want to calm me down so that I don’t struggle when you slit my throat.”

Ludwig shakes his head and draws the ritual dagger from his belt. His jaw tenses as he sets the blade against his palm and slices open his flesh. Blood rolls through his fingers as he uncorks the vial and inhales the vapor. Instantly, the wound closes, knitting together as if sewn shut by invisible thread.

“I stole it from Werner,” Ludwig says, looking at Emile with his repulsive blue doll’s eyes. “For you.”

Is Emile supposed to be grateful? He is sick of these murderous Germans and their presumptions. Ludwig thinks that he can redeem himself now, after the atrocities he has already committed. Emile won’t let him have that solace. He will steal this magical latex for himself, and he knows precisely how to do it.

Ludwig gasps in alarm when Emile kneels at his feet. “What—” His voice cracks as Emile reaches into his trousers and strokes his prick, which immediately twitches to attention. “Stop,” Ludwig whines, but he makes no move to interfere as Emile pulls the head of Ludwig’s prick into his mouth.

Ludwig has no foreskin to speak of. Suddenly, Ludwig’s constant anxiety and cowardice make sense. He is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Emile files that fact away for later use as he makes Ludwig fall apart under the efforts of his tongue. Ludwig sags forward, clutching Emile’s head, huffing as he bobs into Emile’s mouth. Emile holds him fast by the hips and applies vigorous suction.

Emile continues to overstimulate Ludwig’s exposed flesh until Ludwig is barely aware of where he is, much less aware of Emile’s hand creeping into his coat. Emile applies a light touch as he grasps the vial in its bag, but he does not withdraw it until Ludwig’s eyes close in a long moment of bliss. At that moment, Emile quickly transfers the bundle to his own pocket before he returns both hands to Ludwig’s cock and balls. Ludwig, none the wiser, can only rut into Emile’s grasp, seeking Emile’s mouth through the tunnel of his fingers. He stifles his orgasmic cry between his teeth.

Emile directs Ludwig’s spurts of seed to the ground, moving aside to spare himself. Ludwig hunches over Emile, groaning insensibly.

Emile has his chance. The vial is warm against his side. His minor aches and pains fade away within its proximity, and suddenly the cold doesn’t bother him at all. His feet, in their two layers of socks, feel as though they are bundled into thick boots. Ludwig cured a supposedly incurable disease with the substance in the vial. Emile can use it to aid his own escape.

Emile shoves Ludwig to the ground and leaps to his feet, bolting for the door. Ludwig will regret leaving the key behind. Emile slams the door behind him, locks it, and takes the key for himself.

“Lapointe!” Ludwig hammers the door with his fists. “Stop!”

Emile bolts out of the farmhouse into the snow, kicking his way through the thick powder, navigating by the light of the nearly full moon. The farm is far enough from the rest of the German outposts to give him a head start—unless, of course, they send a vehicle after him. This fear catalyzes his flight into an outright sprint down the hill, away from the road. The pine forest in the distance will hide him, and the military trucks and cars will have difficulty navigating through the trees.

Emile’s feet lose sensation almost instantly, and the numbness creeps up his calves. His socks crunch beneath his feet, freezing into icy layers that his skin isn’t warm enough to thaw. Still, Emile doesn’t fear the cold. He grasps the vial in his right hand, and even through the layers of cloth and glass, the latex within instills his limb with a sense of imperviousness. His entire right side retains heat. When he switches hands, the sense of inner warmth travels across to his other side. This succor lightens his feet. He quickly reaches the line of trees and hurries into the forest, heading downhill. He does not intend to stop running until he collapses from exhaustion.

This limit arrives far sooner than he expects. Imprisonment has decimated his endurance, and his rehabilitation with Ludwig failed to restore his body to its previous capabilities. Emile sinks down to his hands and knees in the snow, accepting the stinging cold in his fingers in exchange for a brief respite.

He removes the cork stopper from the vial. The vapor rushes into the open, curling around his face. A familiar, coppery burn sizzles in his nose. His fingers regain their loss of feeling. He reaches down to touch his feet, which should be breaking apart with frostbite. He finds no injury. His energy returns as he huffs the contents of the vial. The vapor seems as though it can’t be depleted. It continues to rise from the latex, clouding in abundance as Emile stirs the contents with his little finger. He gingerly coats his gums with a thin layer of the numbing substance, as Ludwig did when Emile was stricken with fever.

Instantly, Emile is ready to run again. He wonders how far he can travel on the fumes alone. Even his stomach is quiet now. Will he need to sleep at all? He sustains himself through the rest of the night with the vial, opening it each time he tires.

Emile uses the glowing latex as a torch to navigate between the trees and around brambles of dead scrub. Even though vial restores his energy, it cannot immediately undo months of physical and mental exhaustion. His feet drag across the ground. Each time he pauses to uncork the vial, he considers burrowing into the snow and sleeping through the night, until the vapor renews his strength.

Emile strokes the glass with his thumb, marveling at the change in his fate’s trajectory. The latex substance, despite its evil origins, is protecting him. How could something so benevolent come from such a horrific ritual? Emile recalls the experiments that Werner concocted behind closed doors, and the mysterious vat in the center of the barn. Somehow, the slain gypsies have been transformed through numerous scientific processes into a healing salve.

Emile stumbles across a road. He hides the glowing vial under his jacket and hurries across, fleeing into the trees beyond the cleared path. He opens the vial again when he reaches the other side, huffing away the sting in his bare feet. Though the latex restores feeling to his dead skin, it also prevents him from numbing to the cold. Emile leaves the vial open under his nose and breathes deeply to keep his discomfort and exhaustion at bay.

The snow capped mountains blush with the light of dawn. Emile has been walking downhill for hours, and still he seems high above the world, always approaching, never arriving. Again, he thinks of laying down to rest for just a few hours in the snow. He is on the east side of the mountain. Coupled with the vaporous latex, the morning sun may be warm enough to revitalize him for another day of ceaseless travel.

Just as Emile surrenders to his weakness and kneels to cover himself with snow, he hears a faint sound echoing in the distance. Baying, snarling, howling dogs. Emile searches for them up the mountain, following the line of his footsteps back across the road and through the trees.

The line of his footsteps?

Emile’s stomach flips. His knees buckle. He drops the vial in the snow and collapses on top of it, shivering as he comprehends the extent of his own ineptitude. He didn’t cover his footsteps. He left a trail in the fresh powder. The Germans don’t even need their dogs to sniff him out. Anyone with eyes can find him.

Stupid. Idiot. Gypsy fool. Vapid, brainless whore. What is he good for, but picking pockets and getting fucked? Waves of self-loathing crash over Emile, pinning him to the ground. Does he want to be caught? Does it make him feel special, to be used as part of Werner’s sick equation? Has he grown so attached to his captors that he would sabotage his own escape?

The dogs are getting closer. Emile can barely see through his freezing tears. Terrified as he is, he doesn’t expect to die. The Germans can do far worse. His only hope is to dull the inevitable suffering. To that end, Emile takes the vial in his hand. He collects all of the latex on his finger, swiftly wiping the vial clean. His stomach roils as he prepares to consume the remnants of the dead gypsies. He grimly resolves that it is for his own good. The rubbery latex soothes his hands and tingles in the roots of his teeth as he smears the material on his gums. Warmth swells out from the pit of his gut and displaces any nausea he may have felt from using the remnants of the dead. He reclines on his back and stares up at the gray sky, content in his petty victory.

When the pack of German shepherds explode from the forest up the hill, followed by Jung and a host of other soldiers, Emile is still lying there in the snow. He does not move when the dogs snap and drool in his face, nor when Jung screams at him. As he suspected, they do not shoot him.

Jung kicks him in the ribs. Emile may as well be made of stone; still, he curls up and plays along in the interest of hiding his advantage, hugging his midsection in overacted agony. He lets Jung bring him back to Werner like a hound fetching a pheasant for its master.

 

* * *

 

“I’m proud of you, Lapointe.”

Emile can’t take Werner’s statement at face value in his current position: handcuffed to a wooden post in the stable, forced to kneel beside the horrible cross, as they wait for the full moon to rise. The stable is surprisingly clean despite hosting several of the rituals. Werner and Ludwig have not spilled a drop of blood. Still, the rank smell of death has soaked into the floorboards.

“How did you survive?” asks Werner, pacing before Emile. The two are alone for now. Ludwig is separated from Emile and confined to the house, held under Jung’s supervision until nightfall. “You should have succumbed to the cold.” Emile refuses to answer. “You are very resilient. Almost preternaturally so.”

Emile’s handcuffs rattle as he shakes in terror. Still, he affects a false bravado and narrows his eyes at Werner. The doctor returns his gaze, expecting Emile to crack under the pressure of his stare.

Werner speaks first, losing the battle. “Ludwig did well in treating your typhus, didn’t he? I was so sure that you would die. You had a miraculous turnaround.” Emile remains silent. “Tell me.” Werner approaches Emile, looming over him, taking advantage of the fact that Emile is bound too low to stand. “What do you know about sacrifice?”

“ _You_ tell _me,_ ” snarls Emile. “Is Ludwig your sacrifice? That’s what all of this is about, isn’t it—turning your son into a monster like you?”

Werner smiles, startling Emile with his apparent lack of anger. “Stupid boy. He’s no more my son than you are.”

“And yet you both practice Jew magic.”

Werner slaps Emile with the back of his hand. The force of the blow snaps Emile’s head to the side, but he doesn’t feel a thing. He turns back to Werner, who hits him again with a closed fist. “Remarkable. Not a bruise on you.”

Emile jerks the handcuffs in a pointless attempt to escape, sawing the chain against the wooden post to little effect. His imperviousness to pain is not the same as inhuman strength. “Let me go, and I’ll give you a real fight,” he boasts regardless.

“A man does not fight a cockroach.” Werner draws a dagger from his belt, similar to the one that Ludwig uses in the rituals, but far more ornate. Silver decorations, intricate knots and skulls and occult symbols, adorn the black lacquer handle. Gold glimmers in the blade’s delicate inscription.

Emile has a great deal of time to study the dagger as Werner juts the point into the delicate skin below his left eye. Werner nicks his skin, and chuckles when the wound immediately closes. “I see. You are ripe for harvest. Your gypsy blood is doubly imbued.”

Emile tilts his head back, wincing as the blade chases after him. “So kill me,” he taunts. “Or do you need the Jew to do it?”

The blade pierces his left eye. His vision changes from red to white to black in a split second. He screams, more from shock than pain, as Werner jams the dagger deep within his skull. The sharp point cleaves past his optic nerve and sinks into the base of his brain, snaring Emile’s head on the dagger. Werner’s hand clenches around the knife. Emile notices faint tremors coursing through Werner’s arm. The blade trembles against Emile’s eye socket. Emile should be insensible from pain, but all he can feel is the unyielding pressure of the metal that penetrates his eye, and the shivers of Werner’s hand as the doctor subtly struggles to hold the blade still.

“When you ingest the latex,” Werner explains casually, twisting the knife, “you increase the effectiveness as well as the rate of entropy. The vapor product works more slowly, but it is more sustainable over a longer period of time.” Emile shudders and tries to escape the churning blade, but Werner catches him by the neck and holds him in place until the flesh in his eye socket is completely destroyed. “Every injury diminishes the supply.”

Werner rips the dagger loose, spraying blood from the mauled orifice in Emile’s face. Emile’s heart churns as his body struggles to cope with the shock. Then, incredibly, the flow of blood slows and ultimately stops. Emile turns his face to his bound hands and scrubs his knuckles against his eye socket to confirm what he suspects is happening: his ruined eye regrows from the maimed tissue, fresh flesh budding into a new bulb. The missing half of his vision returns, just in time to witness the dagger’s point glinting in the center of his pupil.

“ _Wunderbar."_ Werner spears Emile’s newly-formed eye. Emile wriggles like a fish on a hook, whimpering in panic, as Werner taunts him. “Let’s see how many times you can regenerate that eye.”

“Wait,” Emile begs, “don’t you need to harvest the latex that I ate? What if I bleed it all out?”

Werner’s broad face splits in a malicious grin. “There are always more gypsies.”

For hours, Werner skewers Emile’s eye again and again, thrusting his dagger like a cock in Emile’s skull. Emile endures the unnatural feeling of painless violation, stifling his cries of discomfort to his best ability. He fully expects Werner to fuck his ruined eye socket, so hideously gleeful is the doctor in his new game, but Werner seems to take all the gratification he needs from the stabbing rhythm of the knife.

In the evening, Emile’s sense of pain returns in the form of a splitting headache that branches out of his eye socket and stabs like an electric net over his brain. Werner notices Emile’s intact eye weeping in agony and halts, allowing his damaged eye to slowly regain its functionality for the last time.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Werner mocks him, leaving Emile cuffed to the stable post as he exits the barn to retrieve Ludwig.

Emile tilts his pounding head against the cold wooden wall and sobs in misery and panic. He is going to die soon. Werner drained all of Emile’s stolen hope from the abused hole in his head.

Someone else is crying, too. Emile sucks in a shuddering breath and falls silent. The sound comes again, softly, from above. Emile looks up into the rafters of the barn. He recognizes the white dove that lives outside of his window. It flits from rafter to rafter and perches near Emile. It fluffs out its feathers as it roosts on the wooden bar, evoking the sound of weeping with its cooing calls.

The barn door slams open and scares the dove from its perch. It darts through the rafters as Jung and Werner return, marching Ludwig between them. Jung holds his pistol in the small of Ludwig’s back. Ludwig, with his blankly downturned face, has never looked more like a prisoner, although he still wears his SS disguise. Werner speaks to Ludwig in German, threatening him with his tone. Emile does not have to understand the words to know that Werner is ordering Ludwig to follow the ritual exactly.

Jung shoves Ludwig into the wall of the stable and menaces him with the pistol in his face. Werner slaps the back of Jung’s head, startling the giant. He scolds Jung like an unruly child. Emile wants to laugh at the uselessness of Jung’s pistol, if Werner will not allow him to use it. Now Emile understands why Werner took him from the prison camp to use as a whipping boy. Werner is unwilling to harm his protege, despite the fact that he is a Jew. He needs Ludwig intact.

Ludwig himself comes to a similar realization. He glares boldly at Jung, who steps back in impotence, growling like a confused dog. Werner snaps his fingers to redirect Jung’s attention, and Jung turns his anger on Emile, obediently freeing him from the cuffs to transfer to the X-shaped cross.

Jung crushes Emile’s ankle in his hand as he flips Emile’s heels over his head, holding him upside down as he spreads his legs in the metal cuffs. Emile’s head swings back and forth as Jung wrenches his arms into place on the lower legs of the cross, pinioning Emile like a five pointed star.

The light of the full moon bleeds through the timber walls of the barn as the three Germans gather around Emile in the stable stall. Ludwig steps forward, drawing the knife from the sheath in his belt. Emile, looking upwards from his twisted position, tries desperately to meet Ludwig’s eyes, but Ludwig seems to stare through Emile, as if Emile is nothing more than a ghost, already dead.

Emile’s inverted perspective allows him to notice the returning dove. Its tail fans like the robe of an angel as it spreads its wings in descent. It alights on a rafter directly above Ludwig’s head.

If Ludwig notices Emile looking at the bird, he doesn’t show it. The blade of the dagger flashes as he draws it from its silver-tipped sheath. Beside him, Werner beams in pride, and Jung palms his crotch in fervent need. Emile stares up at Ludwig, defiant in the face of his fear. He wants to watch Ludwig slit his throat. He wants to see the moment that Ludwig becomes a monster.

Ludwig’s eyes meet Emile’s. A hairline fracture over the left lens of Ludwig’s circular glasses splits his eye in two, inspiring a jolt of sympathy pain in Emile’s tortured socket. Ludwig’s face softens in something like a smile. For a moment, Emile trusts that Ludwig will spare him.

Ludwig holds out his hand. The dove lands tamely in his palm. Werner growls a question, a demand for an explanation, which Ludwig ignores. A tear slips down Ludwig’s cheek as he kisses and nuzzles the dove’s head. He angles the dagger below its breast. The little bird doesn’t make a sound when Ludwig stabs its heart. It shudders and lies dead in Ludwig’s hands.

Werner steps forward to grab Ludwig’s arm. Before he can seize him, Ludwig takes the dagger and thrusts it between Emile’s ribs, piercing his heart like the dove’s. The sweetest ache blooms in Emile’s chest, warm and sharp like summer wine. Coupled with the satisfaction of ruining the ritual, this is the last sensation that he will ever feel, and its triumph is intoxicating. He groans in ecstasy as Ludwig pulls the dagger free and unleashes a torrent of blood unfit for Werner’s foul experiments.

Pain is a beautiful gypsy woman in a red dress. She dances with Emile in a slow waltz towards oblivion.


	5. Chapter 5

Emile’s death should have been the end. It wasn’t. Emile died on that bleak winter afternoon to Ludwig’s dagger, but Lapointe was not allowed to rest.

In his first memories, Lapointe recalled an endless void. He was at peace, until an inexorable force snared him, pulled him back to the painful light of existence, and dragged him through a screaming circle of blood.

Visions of Emile’s death returned to Lapointe as he struggled to make sense of his disorienting experience. Lapointe watched his body fall limp on the cross. His perspective was high above the scene, as though he was perched in the rafters of the barn like Ludwig’s bird. He heard Werner’s voice, screaming, furious with Ludwig’s disobedience. He watched Ludwig, pale and silent, slicing the dagger along his bare arm. Ludwig knelt on the ground and cradled the dead dove tenderly in the crook of his arm as he used his own blood to trace a circle on the floor. The circle, the six pointed star, the runes around the edges—when Ludwig lay the dove in the center of the seal, the tableau came together. Ludwig had sacrificed the dove for Emile.

Emile’s body, however, dangled unmoving. Werner pointed at the apparent failure and mocked Ludwig, who glared defiantly at his mentor. Werner seethed in rage. He still wouldn’t punish Ludwig directly, but he made Ludwig watch as Jung interred Emile.

Jung yanked Emile’s limp, exsanguinated corpse from the cross. Emile’s wrist bones cracked as Jung twisted him against the cuffs, crushing his hands until he could slip Emile free. Jung carried Emile to the glass-walled vat in the center of the barm and dumped his broken body inside, sealing the box around him like a watery tomb. The pumps and pistons forced fluid through the network of pipes. Acid bubbled around Emile. His skin dissolved first, revealing the tiny remnants of his yellow fat over the sinewy pink tracts of his muscles, before these, too, began to degrade. The white edges of his bone jutted from his limbs as his body twisted in the flowing solution.

All the while, Werner cornered Ludwig against the wall, bellowing and ranting. Ludwig did not respond. He looked past Werner, gazing up at the ceiling, as if he could see Lapointe drifting there like his erstwhile dove.

Time meant nothing to Lapointe in this limbo between life and death. Just as quickly as he was in the barn, he was pulled elsewhere, like a feather on the wind.

The next thing that Lapointe remembered was the sensation of floating in a cold womb. Shadows approached and hovered at a distance, always watching, haunting his restless dreams. In these dreams, Lapointe walked like a ghost through Emile’s life and observed the events from afar, just as the dark specters observed him. Marseille, Paris, Struthof. Emile’s path never changed or reversed. Each step brought him closer to death. His demise was inevitable, even welcome. It was a respite from suffering.

Emile remained in the past. Lapointe stepped forth as a sacrifice, allowing Emile to rest. He split from Emile like the cutting of a plant. In the water of his second womb, he budded and grew, until he was a man unto himself.

In the same moment that Lapointe became a person, the womb abruptly drained, and he breached into the unforgiving air. Sterile tile walls stretched over Lapointe’s head. Humidity smothered his chest like a hot blanket. His lungs felt as though they couldn’t expand. Electricity shocked through him, locking his muscles into spasm.

“ _Komm schon,_ ” urged Ludwig’s voice. The shock came again. Lapointe gasped and wheezed, breathing at last. Ludwig clenched his red-gloved fist in victory.

Lapointe groaned as the world rocked below him. It felt strange to be affected by gravity again.  Leather straps across his body prevented him from rising to take stock of his physical condition. “What have you done to me?”

“I gave you a second chance,” Ludwig responded. His French was better than Lapointe remembered, although his accent was still terrible. His face and frame had lost their gawky adolescent qualities, filling out in maturity.

“How long have I been dead?” The question was surreal, and yet the words left Lapointe’s mouth as easily as any others.

“Five years, I’m afraid.” Ludwig wore the same round glasses as ever. He adjusted them, guiltily avoiding Lapointe’s roaming eyes. “I brought you back because I need your help.”

Lapointe scoffed, using his disbelief to shield his mind from the absurdity of his situation. “What could you possibly need from a cockroach like me?”

“It’s Werner.” Ludwig stared at the ground. “I don’t know how to stop him.”

“Kill him, you idiot. Stab him. That should be easy.” Lapointe grinned cruelly. “Or can you only kill helpless prisoners?”

“I’m trying to save them!” Ludwig clenched his hands in his thick black hair, screwing up his face in a silent scream, having a miniature tantrum. His mind had clearly not held up well over the years. No sane man would have resorted to resurrecting his old test subject.

“Let me up, Aron.” That name was still a potent psychological weapon. Ludwig cringed and snapped to attention, undoing the straps around Lapointe. He backed away at once, probably suspecting an attack. He was right; if Lapointe wasn’t so dizzy, he would have snapped Ludwig’s neck.

Lapointe sat up on the operating table and stared down at his nude, unmarked body in awe. Unlike Ludwig, he had not aged a day. He was still as skinny as ever. His wasted muscles strung over his knobby bones like rags on a clothesline. The creases of his skin were sticky from the fluid that had encased him moments ago.

“How are you feeling?” Ludwig asked, peering cautiously from a distance. “Any pain?”

“I’m lightheaded, but that’s all.”

Ludwig peeled a metal cap from long-necked glass bottle and handed it to Lapointe. He studied the label. _Guaraná._ He took a sip and nearly spat out the incredibly sweet, bubbling liquid, but his body wouldn’t let him reject the nourishment. His mouth sucked greedily at the bottle, flooding his throat and belly with the syrupy drink.

As Lapointe drank, Ludwig began to explain the circumstances. “We are in Brazil,” he said. He paused, expecting Lapointe to react, but the news was no more overwhelming than his resurrection. “The war is over.”

“And yet you’re in exactly the same situation.” Lapointe placed the empty bottle on the table next to him. “Do you have any food?”

Ludwig produced two fried pastries stuffed with meat. “Chew them slowly.”

Lapointe tried to savor them, but one bite lead to another. He understood Ludwig’s warning when his stomach roiled under the stress of processing solid food. He vomited everything on the floor.

“That was my fault,” Ludwig said, offering a towel. “I should have brought something lighter.”

“Oh, is that what you should have done?” Lapointe snarled as he wiped his face.

Ludwig sets his jaw stubbornly. “I’m sorry, but I need you.”

“You need me to kill Werner for you?” Lapointe laughed. “After all this time, you still need someone to do your dirty work.”

Ludwig stomped his foot. He wore the same military style boots, even though his black SS uniform had been replaced by a white lab coat over a grey suit. “It’s not that easy! Jung is here as well.”

“That stupid beast?” Lapointe forced another laugh in an attempt to hide his fear. “He’s just a man like any other. Kill him, too.”

“I don’t care if he lives or dies. We have to save the children, before they meet the same fate as those gypsies.”

Lapointe shuddered as he recalled the sacrifices and vivisections. He did not want to ask, but his conscience gave him no choice: “What children?”

“Werner has been stealing the local children for his experiments. He uses them like he used you, threatening to hurt one if the others disobey him.” Ludwig choked, struggling to continue. “We have already killed one,” he admitted at last, as moisture glinted in his eyes. “Two remain.”

Lapointe scrubbed his hands over his face. “You killed a child,” he repeated flatly.

“I had no choice,” whimpered Ludwig. He sank into a nearby chair, removing his glasses to wipe his eyes.

“You disgust me. You are the same coward that you always were. You need a dead man to solve the problems that you created.”

“Not just any dead man.” Ludwig set his jaw, blinking back his tears as he replaced his spectacles on his face. “You are my familiar. I sacrificed my old familiar and bound your soul in a ritual. I compel you to follow my orders.”

Lapointe laughed harshly, doubling over with the force of it, until he feared his brittle ribs would crack. “Of course,” he crowed. “You want a personal slave, just like your master. I must be disappointing compared to Jung. I’m not strong enough to rape anyone to death.”

“You’re not my slave. I just need your help for one day.” Ludwig insisted, “You can have your freedom after we stop them.”

“You’re a liar and a child-killer,” snarled Lapointe. “You’ve caused me nothing but misfortune. Send me back to the void, damn you.”

Ludwig surprised Lapointe by dropping to his knees on the ground, lowering himself below Lapointe’s seat on the operating table. “Please,” Ludwig begged, clasping his hands together. His brimming tears spilled down his cheeks as he sobbed, “I’m not strong enough to resist him on my own. I never was. You’re the only person that I ever believed in.”

“Stop blubbering,” grunted Lapointe, recoiling from Ludwig. “It’s embarrassing.” He was taken aback by the emotional display. Screaming orders and threatening punishment was the German method. Ludwig could have commanded Lapointe to obey him as his familiar, if that indeed was true, but he hadn’t. Ludwig chose to humble himself instead.

Reluctantly, Lapointe said, “I’ll help you, all right?” Ludwig blew his nose into a kerchief and thanked him. “Now, if you’re done staring at my cock, can I have something to wear?”

Ludwig turned away in a pathetic farce of modesty as Lapointe dressed himself in his spare clothes. Lapointe cinched a worn leather belt around Ludwig’s slacks, punching an extra hole in the leather to fit his narrow hips. He rolled his shirtsleeves several times until his hands emerged from the cuffs. Instead of wearing Ludwig’s socks, he stuffed them into the toes of Ludwig’s work boots, lacing them tightly to keep the oversized shoes in his feet.

Ludwig checked the hall before he lead Lapointe out of the operating room. They walked through a facility that brought a hospital to mind, but there were no nurses or patients to be seen. A droning hum filled the empty spaces, chilling Lapointe with the reminder of the barn, the rituals, and the experimental machine filled with bubbling acid.

Ludwig held out his arm to stop Lapointe. He nodded towards a closed door. The solid wood door prevented them from seeing inside, and the oppressive hum throughout the building drowned out any noises they might have heard. A sign beside the door read _Enfermaria de Pediatria_.

Before Lapointe could ask why they didn’t simply go inside and take the children, Jung’s harsh, guttural voice echoed within the room. Lapointe recognized the cadence of Jung’s vulgar threats. He stepped forward, but Ludwig clamped his hand on Lapointe’s arm and shook his head. Lapointe ground his teeth to keep from screaming at him.

The droning sound thrummed through the concrete floor below their feet as Ludwig led Lapointe to a room at the end of the hall. This room was labeled _Armazenamento_. Heavy chains and padlocks sealed the double doors, but Ludwig held the keys. Lapointe prepared himself to confront the insidious experiments again. He clenched his fists and faced the laboratory.

As he and Ludwig stepped into the vaulted space, Lapointe’s eyes went directly to the X-shaped cross bolted to the wall. Above it, a window looked out at the waning moon. He paced around the ritual arrangement, noting the lack of blood on the floor.

The laboratory also housed three replicas of the acid vat. The newer models were smaller, with less exposed machinery and piping, although they seemed in worse repair than the original experiment. The humid climate rusted the panels and pipes, which flaked on the concrete floor. Two of the vats were empty, filled only with viscous, bubbling fluid.

Jung floated in the third vat. The liquid must have distorted the vat’s contents, because Jung’s body looked absurdly small, with a disproportionately large head compared to his stubby, underdeveloped limbs. Lapointe gaped, astounded. He was sure that he had heard Jung screaming in the hall.

“That’s not him,” Ludwig explained in a whisper. “Werner turned one of the children into that thing. It’s taking longer to grow than you did. I had to work quickly—I completed you in five hours from start to finish, just this evening. You are my finest work.”

Lapointe finally understood his experience of floating in water while shadows observed him. “How did you do it?”

“I retrieved a fragment of your bone from the acid.” Ludwig approached an empty vat and pressed his palm against the glass. “To reverse the process, we drain the acid from the vat and replace it with synthetic amniotic fluid. I smuggled you in my clothes and grew your new body from a piece of your femur.”

Lapointe swallowed back his nausea as he remembered the vision of Emile’s body, twisting to and fro as the acid dissolved him into red mist. “I wish you hadn’t.”

“When this is over, I’ll help you go anywhere you want,” Ludwig answered, turning from the glass to face Lapointe. “We’ll both be free.”

“As long as I’m far away from you.” Lapointe crossed his arms. “Your promises are worthless if we fail.”

“We won’t.” Ludwig reached into his pocket and produced a glowing vial of latex that Lapointe knew well.

 

* * *

 

Lapointe hid himself among the conjoined machinery that powered the vats. The position spared him from having to look at Jung’s unnatural copy, or at his own gestation chamber. Unfortunately, his cover blocked his line of sight to the door. He had to trust that Ludwig would fulfill his part of the plan.

Trust did not come easily to Lapointe, but Ludwig had earned a small measure of it by presenting Lapointe with a folding butterfly knife. Ludwig himself had no other weapon but his ritual dagger. According to Ludwig, both Jung and Werner wielded guns. Ludwig and Lapointe would have to kill each man simultaneously, using surprise to even the odds.

Lapointe gripped the knife tightly in his hand as he crouched behind the machines. His empty stomach gurgled at the worst possible time. Lapointe crushed his knees against his chest, curling around his midsection. The churning pipes that circulated liquid through the vats should have been loud enough to overpower the noise. He cursed himself for vomiting up the food that Ludwig had brought him.

After a torturous wait, Lapointe heard crying and shouting in the hall. He flattened himself against a metal circuit box, readying the knife as the door opened. If he craned his head to the side, he could see through a sliver between two vats.

Two dark-skinned, curly-haired children stumbled into the room, wearing tiny white gowns that covered them to the knee. They were so young that Lapointe could not tell if they were boys or girls. One of the children bawled inconsolably. The other stared blankly at the floor. Lapointe’s chest squeezed in empathy. At their age, he was also held captive for the profit of others and forced into dangerous circumstances against his will. Werner’s intimidating vats reminded Lapointe of the gigantic machines from the textile mill of his youth.

Jung followed closely behind the children. The giant threatened them with a submachine gun; ironically, his current targets could have been controlled with nothing more than a stern word. Jung circled the pair of children as Ludwig and Werner entered the room. They spoke to one another in hushed German, until Werner abruptly issued an order to Jung.

Jung seized the crying child by the arm as Werner walked towards the control panel, behind which Lapointe waited to strike. The doctor stood over the dials that controlled the pressures in the various vats, making adjustments and changing switches. One of the vats began to churn and bubble, draining liquid in preparation to accept the new body. Jung ripped at the child’s gown, ignoring the screams.

Lapointe leaned out from behind the circuit box and cut his knife behind Werner’s ankles. The blade caught and severed his Achilles tendons, hobbling him instantly. Werner gasped, too shocked to shout, and fell on his side.

Lapointe leapt atop Werner. He stabbed him twice in the chest before Werner caught his arm and grappled for the knife. Blood filmed on the doctor’s teeth as he snarled in Lapointe’s face.

Jung’s weapon blasted behind Lapointe, deafening in the enclosed space. Glass shattered and fluid spilled on the floor as Jung fired at Ludwig, who charged inside the range of his gun and jammed his ritual dagger into Jung’s belly. Jung’s lumpy innards spilled from the yawning chasm.

Lapointe heard the giant collapse like a felled oak, but he had no time to revel in the victory. He leaned his paltry weight into his knife, fighting with all of his limited strength to stab Werner a third time. Even with multiple injuries, Werner still overpowered Lapointe; he threw him to the side, giving up the fight for the knife in order to put distance between them.

Jung’s weapon burst with another rattling report. Ludwig screamed and fell to the ground. Psychic pain flared hot in Lapointe’s chest, as if dozens of phantom bullets had struck him as well. He grimaced in agony and clutched his hands over the invisible wounds.

From the corner of his eye, Lapointe saw a pistol trembling in Werner’s bloodied hand. Lapointe dove for cover behind the control panel. Bullets pierced the pipes and panels as Lapointe crawled through the maze to the other side. Sparks sizzled out of the exposed wires in the control box, and smoke billowed into the air.

Werner emptied the barrel of his revolver and cursed when he realized that every shot had destroyed another part of his experiment. He expelled a wet, labored cough. When Lapointe peered out from behind the machinery, he saw Werner wiping blood from his mouth and attempting to feed more bullets into his gun. Werner’s hands shook violently. A bullet fell to the floor, rolling towards Lapointe.

Lapointe prepared to dash across the room as Werner struggled and failed to reload his pistol. Faintly, the more vocal child continued to sob somewhere in the smoke. Lapointe tried to locate the children so that he could run to them, but he could only see the limp bodies of Jung and Ludwig from his position. Dense smoke continued to rise from the broken machines. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to see anything at all.

He heard Werner inhaling deeply. Werner’s breath rattled. His lungs were seemingly endless in their capacity. Lapointe wondered why he would inhale smoke; then, he remembered the Werner’s mysterious latex, and the misty vapor that emitted continually from the substance. Werner was healing himself. Lapointe had to stop him.

Lapointe gritted his teeth and ran at Werner. The doctor jerked to the side, narrowly avoiding a stab in the neck. He kicked Lapointe in the stomach. Lapointe’s weak body crumpled under the force of the blow, and he rolled on the floor, holding the knife out in front of him and slashing it through the air to keep Werner at bay.

Werner chuckled as he and Lapointe faced one another. He gripped the glowing vial in his shaking hand. To Lapointe’s dismay, the vapor rapidly sealed Werner’s knife wounds. The doctor rose to his feet and gripped his empty pistol. As Werner approached him, Lapointe backed away towards the sparking machinery.

Behind Werner, a small figure moved across the room. The crying child emerged from the smoke, searching for the exit. When Lapointe followed the child with his eyes, Werner turned, and reached out to seize his fleeing test subject.

Lapointe launched himself at Werner, cutting his legs out from under him. Lapointe stabbed his knife into Werner’s back as he fell. Lapointe lost his grip on the weapon when Werner reared back and slammed his fist into Lapointe’s face, crushing his nose. The handle of the blade jutted from Werner’s ribs as he pinned Lapointe’s arms under his knees. He hit Lapointe again and again, until Lapointe struggled to breathe. Werner glared down at him and reached behind himself to grasp Lapointe’s knife. He winced and grunted as he ripped the blade out, unconcerned about the gash it left behind.

Trapped under Werner and choking on the flow of blood from his nose, Lapointe looked up helplessly as Werner took the knife and held it to his throat. Heavy black smoke blanketed the ceiling. Light flickered from the rising fire in the machines, casting Werner’s looming shadow on the wall.

“Death is too good for you,” Werner hissed. “If you want to save these little vermin so badly, you can take their place.” Lapointe spat in Werner’s face. Werner snarled and slit an unsteady, shaking line across Lapointe’s neck, shallow enough to keep him alive, but deep enough to make him bleed.

Something distracted Werner; he had noticed Ludwig twitching in the water. Although Ludwig’s body was riddled with bullet holes, he still managed to uncap the vial and lift his hand to his mouth.

“Thieving rat.” Werner kept Lapointe’s arms pinned under his knees as he once more attempted to reload his pistol. Werner’s hands continued to shake terribly, slowing his progress. Flames licked the walls behind him. Ludwig’s eyes widened as he understood Werner’s intention to kill him at last. He crawled towards Jung’s submachine gun, dragging legs that weren’t yet working. Lapointe fought for all he was worth to throw Werner off balance, but his struggles made little difference.

A sudden, ominous rumble filled the room, deeper than the churning of the machines. Cracks opened across the ceiling. Fine plaster rained down, heralding the large fragments of the building’s structure that broke loose and tumbled to the ground. A rafter crashed through the ceiling and crushed one of the vats. Fire spread along the walls, sparing only the flooded ground.

Werner threw himself away from Lapointe to avoid the falling rafter. The doctor’s plans shifted at once to self-preservation. Werner ran for the door, but he turned back at the threshold. Before he could aim his trembling gun at Lapointe, another segment of the ceiling fell between them, releasing a cloud of flaming dust. Werner cursed and fled into the hall.

Lapointe panted through his mouth, surpassing his crushed nostrils. He crawled on his hands and knees around the rafter. Fire devoured the long piece of wood, burning above the liquid on the floor.

On the other side of the rafter, Ludwig floundered in the shallow lake on his elbows and knees. He coughed violently as he attempted to stand. Bullets fell from his mending wounds and clattered on the ground. When he saw Lapointe, he wheezed, pointing at the machines.

The two children huddled together in terrified silence behind the single intact vat. Lapointe crawled towards them, calling urgently, but they did not respond to him.

The building groaned again. Lapointe looked up, and saw a massive chunk of the roof falling towards him. He rolled to the side. The debris missed him and fell over the vat, covering the children in flaming plaster and wood.

“No!” Lapointe dragged his arms through the liquid that had spilled from the broken vats on the floor and thrust his wet hands into the pile of rubble. The fluid formed a temporary seal on his skin, but his shirt caught fire regardless. Ignoring it, he dug frantically, until his hand caught a tiny arm. He pulled, and the unconscious child tumbled into his lap. Lapointe rolled on the wet floor to extinguish the flames on them both.

The other child was still trapped. Lapointe left the first on the floor and dove back into the wreckage. His eyebrows and eyelashes burned away as he leaned into the pile, thrusting his arms ahead of himself to search for the second child. Crumbling plaster and splintered wood tumbled over his arms, but there was no body to be found.

Ludwig came up beside him, his legs finally in order. He followed Lapointe’s example, dousing his arms before he reached out with them. Unlike Lapointe, Ludwig withdrew his hands immediately, unable to stand the pain. He watched in awe as Lapointe continued to search for the child in spite of the fire that crawled over his arms and chest.

Finally, Lapointe felt something soft. He yanked, but the child was stuck. “Help me!” he screamed at Ludwig, who hurried to lift a plank of wood that pinned the child under the wreckage. Together, they managed to free the second child. The poor thing’s entire body was covered in weeping, oozing burns that would have been torturous to endure if the child was awake.

“Take the other one,” Lapointe gasped, as he attempted to stand. The child was heavier than he estimated. He could barely carry the weight.

Seeing this, Ludwig took both children in his arms, lifting them easily. “Follow me.” He bent low underneath the thick smoke. Lapointe staggered after him, struggling to stay conscious despite his crashing adrenaline and the creeping pain in his burned arms and face.

Ludwig navigated the halls until he reached the building’s exit. He kicked the door with his boot, but it wouldn’t open. “ _Scheiße,_ ” Ludwig exclaimed. “He locked us in. We have to get to a window. Come on!” He shouldered the children and hurried into a nearby office, where a pair of wooden chairs sat in front of a desk.

Lapointe grasped one of wooden chairs and slammed it into the windowpane, shattering the glass. He used the legs to clear the broken shards around the edges before he squeezed out of the opening, landing in tall grass on the other side.

Ludwig passed the two children through the window. Lapointe lay them carefully on the ground in turn. He grimaced when dirt clung to their burned, wrinkled flesh.

Ludwig jumped out of the window and lifted the children again. He carried them away from the building, towards a copse of palm trees that lined a dirt road. When he and Lapointe gained a safe distance from the fire, he removed his white coat and spread it on the ground, arranging the children on top of it.

Ludwig touched their wrists. The first child passed inspection. However, Ludwig faltered when the took the pulse of the second, who had been rescued last. Ludwig’s tears dripped on the tiny, blistered face.

Emile couldn’t believe his dawdling. “Use the vial!” he shouted.

“It won’t work on the dead,” choked Ludwig. “Everything I need to revive a person is back _there._ ” He gestured hopelessly at the burning building, which glowed red against the overcast midnight sky.

Lapointe hardened his heart. If Ludwig was going to fall apart, then he would need to be strong for them both. “Then fix the other one,” he snapped. “Do it quickly!”

Ludwig clapped his hands over his coat, searching for the vial of latex. His face crumpled further when his hands came up empty.

“You didn’t drop it.”

Ludwig buried his face in his hands and sobbed. Lapointe screamed in frustration and seized Ludwig by the shoulders, shaking him violently. “Calm yourself! What would a real doctor do in this situation?”

Ludwig shuddered, breathing unevenly as he tried to respond. “Need a hospital,” he croaked. “Supplies. Disinfectant.”

“Then let’s go.” Lapointe gripped the trunk of a nearby palm tree and struggled to his feet. Ludwig sniffled as he bundled the single remaining child in his coat.

They had just started down the road when they heard sirens in the distance. Lapointe ran ahead, waving his arms at the approaching fire brigade.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has been revised from the original version. Special thanks to ScrapThat, who highlighted a missed opportunity in this chapter and made suggestions for improvement.

The child remained in a coma for weeks. Lapointe visited the child every day as he recovered from his own burns. His were painful, but superficial. They eventually faded to shiny, pale scars on his arms and chest that he could easily cover with a shirt.

The child was not so lucky. Bandages wrapped the little body from head to toe, leaving small slits for the eyes, mouth, and nose. Lapointe knew that the skin beneath those bandages had melted like wax. The child required several emergency surgeries to separate the flesh that sealed nostrils shut and stuck fingers together. When Lapointe leaned close, he could hear labored breaths wheezing from the parted lips.

Ludwig, for his part, narrowly avoided imprisonment. In an incredible feat of persuasion, he convinced the Brazilian court to exonerate him. Hearing about it afterwards, Lapointe wondered if Ludwig had cast a spell on the court, or if he had simply bribed them. Ludwig claimed that he had managed to paint Jung and Werner as criminally negligent parties. His subordinate status on paper made him look like a hapless employee in Werner’s clinic, ultimately not at fault for the fire. It helped that the only victims were orphaned children, with no one to fight for them.

“What should we do?” Ludwig asked Lapointe, as they smoked blond American tobacco outside of the hospital in Baía. The pungent clouds obscured the sharp smell of sea salt near the coast.

Lapointe inhaled the smoke stubbornly into his lungs, exacerbating the damage he sustained from the fire. “There’s no _we,_ ” he answered when he had finished coughing. “You’re responsible for the poor creature. Find a way to take care of it.”

Ludwig furrowed his brow. He held the cigarette in his hand and allowed it to burn as he stood in silence. His disappointment was revolting. He probably couldn’t wait for Lapointe to suck his cock again. Lapointe’s pulse raced as he waited for Ludwig to claim ownership over his familiar.

“I’m getting out of this miserable slum,” declared Lapointe. “And you’re buying my ticket.”

Ludwig nodded mutely.

That was their last conversation, aside from a terse exchange when Lapointe came to collect the money for a train ticket. He didn’t ask Ludwig what he planned to do with the child. He didn’t want the responsibility, the heartache, of a problem that he didn’t cause. Nothing would stand in the way of his freedom.

 

* * *

 

Traveling by rail across South and Central America was not an ideal route, but Lapointe intended to enter the United States without any identification. He adapted his limited European Spanish to the provincial dialects that he encountered along the way, although he encountered many indigenous peoples who spoke no Spanish at all. When he reached Mexico, he convinced a farmer to smuggle him in the back of his truck by sucking his cock and offering to sleep with him once they arrived. Lapointe reneged on this agreement as soon as they crossed into Texas, disappearing when the farmer stopped to refuel.

Lapointe made his way through the States in this manner, trading sexual favors when he couldn’t simply steal money, shelter, or transportation. His body was his greatest asset: although burns blemished his forearms, his youthful appearance endeared him to many desperate men. He looked like an easy target to the johns, and he allowed them to think that he was simply a lost boy in order to lull them into a false sense of a security. Lapointe took his payment and more when he robbed them. By the time they realized that they had underestimated him, he was already in the next city.

Playing the part of an innocent rentboy came easily to Lapointe. As he aged, he expanded his repertoire. The diverse American population, including many worldwide refugees from the war, provided endless inspiration for his numerous aliases. There was no language he could not speak, no mask he could not wear. Anonymity was its own freedom. He replaced his past at whim with whatever fiction came to mind, until he believed his own stories about his upbringing in a Greek vineyard, or his peculiar Amish extended family, or his work on Broadway.

Women loved him, especially after he developed some limited muscle tone. Malnutrition in his early years stunted Lapointe to a degree. While he reached his full height quickly, the rest of his body lagged behind his bones. He used clothing to appear like less of a scarecrow. His apparent vulnerability appealed to certain women, especially those older women who desired a young companion. He was both mysterious and nonthreatening, and he allowed his female partners to project their fantasies on to him. He would take those desires and incorporate them into his performance to further win their trust. In this way, he forged numerous relationships with women, leading them to believe that theirs was a great love until the day that he took what he needed and vanished.

One woman stood out from the rest. Rita was close to his age, with jet black hair and lively blue eyes. Her large front teeth protruded from her wry smile. Lapointe met her in Boston, where she expressed her frank interest by groping him in a bar. He bedded her in an expensive hotel that tricked her into thinking that he was affluent. Even after he found out that she had little money of her own, he lingered. They spent a week together like honeymooners, cavorting hand in hand. Their favorite activity was watching passers by and mocking their clothes and manner. Rita made him laugh—real laughter, not the ruse that he forced to put people at ease. Her brutally honest humor was a product of a difficult life. She was the single mother of seven sons through various absent fathers. Lapointe was in awe of her slim, curvy body, which bore her numerous children with little more than stretch marks and loose skin as evidence. She hated when he kissed her deflated lower belly, but it was his favorite part of her. He related to the weakness of women, to the resilience of their fragile bodies.

Rita’s litter of boys should have been a warning to Lapointe. After so much consequence-free sex with men, he had no realistic expectations. She contacted him one day and complained of nausea. Soon, her sons would be a group of eight.

The next morning, Lapointe boarded a airplane to France. He had stuffed an envelope full of hundred-dollar bills into Rita’s mail slot before he left. It was the most that he could do. He was never meant to be a father.

 

* * *

 

Many of the passengers on Lapointe’s flight remarked on the novelty of air travel. Lapointe experienced no such wonder. Flying above the ocean in a giant metal craft was not the strangest thing that had ever happened to him. He chain smoked as he studied a map of Europe, familiarizing himself with the new borders. He noted that Alsace, as well as the other German-annexed territories, had returned to France. It pleased him to see that Germany had been split into several pieces as punishment.

After he landed, he couldn’t bring himself to enter Paris. Instead, he traveled south to Spain. He became fascinated with a group of gypsies in Seville. The Spanish brand of fascism had overlooked the gitanos, allowing them to flourish, as much as any gypsies could on the fringes of society. He stalked them from afar for months. With any other group of people, he would have approached an individual and seduced them, and then used the relationship to ingratiate himself with the community. However, he was afraid to infiltrate the gitanos. If they looked at him and recognized another gypsy, he felt that he would no longer have the safety of a disguise.

Lapointe never approached them. He hitchhiked to Italy, where he Dario Morandi, an extraordinarily hairy sports car racer with a voracious sexual appetite. Lapointe planned to use Dario to learn how to drive, but Dario was too proud and stubborn to let anyone else touch his beloved cars. It would have been gratifying to steal the sleek black Aurelia that Dario drove when he wasn’t racing. Lapointe had the key in hand when he imagined Dario chasing after him in the Ferrari. He rethought his strategy and decided to take Dario’s money instead.

Dario caught him leaving with the prize money from his last race in hand. Lapointe wondered if he had intentionally allowed Dario to discover him. How else could he explain the way his cock stiffened when Dario cornered him in his house, battering Lapointe’s face and kicking him, before roughly fucking him facedown on the floor? Lapointe’s cheek rolled against the cold tiles, his blood staining the grout as Dario rutted into him. He humped his own fist, whining with need. When Dario’s ferocity flagged, Lapointe insulted him until Dario growled in rage.

“I should have left your bony ass by the road,” Dario snarled, snapping his hips. His big cock punished Lapointe’s prostate, ripping him open and squeezing out the desperate strings of his climax. Dario slammed Lapointe against the floor and rattled his teeth in his skull, and Lapointe moaned in abject need. If he could speak, he would have declared his love for Dario at that moment, but his tongue was swollen and bloody, and his head felt like a helium balloon. Dario left him on the floor and stomped into his bedroom to smoke a cigar. Lapointe crawled after him and lay his head on Dario’s thigh. He sucked Dario clean.

They were together for a year. Dario hated Lapointe, but he never refused an offer for sex, and he allowed Lapointe to sleep in his bed more often than not. Lapointe became addicted to the exhilarating danger of their unhealthy relationship. He pushed Dario further each time they fought, insulting him as cruelly as possible, until Dario regularly beat him bloody and fucked him until he passed out. Lapointe began to fear that Dario would kill him. Worse, he desired it.

An offhand comment from Dario managed to break Lapointe’s hysterical downward spiral. Dario was furious about his young sister’s new suitor, a Corsican. Dario was sure that the little gangster would hook his sister on heroin. He ranted about the young man’s criminal connections, and with a jolt, Lapointe remembered a ghost from his past.

 

* * *

 

Tracking Raul Savelli was easier than it should have been. He had survived the war and expanded his influence, and everyone in the heroin trade knew his name. Lapointe cringed when he learned that Raul was still in Paris. He resolved to return, if only to permanently remove any impulse he had to visit his old home. As long as Raul lived, there was still a link between Lapointe and his previous life as Emile. Killing Raul would sever that link.

Lapointe hated being in Paris. The city had recovered from occupation, but he could still see the German banners and military convoys. On the first evening of his return, he grew increasingly anxious as the curfew approached, and he couldn’t quite believe it when the streetlamps stayed on. He walked the roads that he knew and saw no one that he recognized. Affluent tourists and returned natives choked the streets that had been so empty in his memories.

Raul still ran his business behind the cafe. It was strange to see the tables filled with customers in the street. Lapointe entered through the back door. No one was there to stop him, not a single thug or lackey. Was Raul truly so confident now?

Lapointe stepped into Raul’s office. His knees felt weak as he looked around at the updated newspaper clippings and familiar family portraits that lined the walls. Wallpaper peeled from the dusty corners. The aged desk was the same that he had crawled underneath to service Raul, in exchange for his and Henri’s escape. Lapointe focused on his anger, banishing the remnants of his boyhood vulnerability. He would not go another day without revenge. Lapointe removed his black suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt as he waited by the door, forcing himself not to smoke.

The door opened at last. Lapointe obscured himself behind it.

Raul spoke to someone in the hall, directing them to deliver a message, before he stepped into his office alone. He did not notice Lapointe. His leather shoes dragged across the floor as he stumbled towards his chair, wheezing faintly. What remained of Raul’s hair was grey. He was not as tall or as broad as Lapointe remembered, and he was much fatter. His gut spilled out of his suit and wobbled ahead of him with every step. He paused in the center of the room and withdrew a silver case, from which he extracted a cigarette with his swollen hand. His rings cut into his fingers like strings around a ham. Raul sparked an engraved silver lighter that matched his case and inhaled the cigarette deeply. His chins rippled as he struggled not to cough.

Lapointe stepped towards him. Raul’s pinstriped silk suit jacket stretched across the rolls of his back. His mass rippled as he suppressed his coughing fit, so as not to alert anyone in the hall to his vulnerability. Lapointe appreciated Raul’s discretion. He was able to unfold his butterfly knife and stab Raul’s kidney in total privacy.

Raul gasped raggedly as he felt the piercing wound in the back of his ribs. Lapointe clasped a rag over Raul’s mouth, muffling the scream that followed. He withdrew the blade and stabbed Raul again, destroying his other kidney. A waterfall of blood flowed from Raul’s back as he jerked and swayed in Lapointe’s arms, before he collapsed with a heavy thump to the floor. His bleary eyes bulged as he stared up at Lapointe. “Henri?”

Lapointe leaned over Raul, drinking in his pain and confusion. “Guess again.” He flashed the knife above Raul’s neck.

“The boy,” Raul whispered, scanning Lapointe’s face. “You really were his son.”

Lapointe swallowed. He wanted to respond with something that would devastate Raul, but he could think of nothing except Henri. When Raul tried to speak again, Lapointe slit his throat.

Blood sprayed from the gash in Raul’s neck, coating Lapointe’s waistcoat in a warm, sticky mess. The knife dripped as he squeezed it in his fist. Raul’s bloated face gaped at him like a dead fish.

Henri had died in the same manner, his throat slashed by Emile’s blade. Henri was still bleeding, his heart still weakly pulsing, when the police took Emile away and sent him to Struthof.

Lapointe’s stomach roiled. He vomited in the drawer of Raul’s desk, soiling bundles of forgotten papers and pens. He searched the desk until he found something to wipe the sick from his face and the blood from his hands. Raul’s stained kerchief smelled like tobacco and garlic, just as he remembered.

Emile’s secret died with him. Now, only Lapointe knew the truth. Emile’s father fucked him and sold him for their daily bread, and Emile mewled for more, pledging his erotic love to his father like a perverted little slut. Emile was nothing more than a whore; an incestuous, contemptible cockroach. Lapointe was supposed to be a different person—a new person—and yet his first act as a free man was to prostitute himself and steal.

Lapointe gritted his teeth and kicked the desk with his blood-splattered shoe. He hated Emile. The boy was like an anchor, dragging Lapointe back to the depths of his wretched past. Killing Raul had changed nothing, just as killing Henri had changed nothing. The grotesque legacy of Emile was etched into Lapointe’s undead bones. He craved sex and punishment because he was a base creature, whelped in perversion and tempered in sin.

In a storm of sadness and spite, Lapointe raided Raul’s corpse. He stole his money, his lighter, his cigarette case, and his watch. Lapointe retrieved his own suit jacket from behind the door and covered the evidence of his crime under the garment. Red splatters emerged from the edges of the jacket; he would have to walk quickly to avoid notice, but he was confident in his ability to disappear within a crowd. If he was caught, he planned to kill himself before the police took him to another prison.

Lapointe stepped into the street, holding Raul’s silver cigarette case. Raul’s lighter hissed in his hand as he lit a Gauloise. Lapointe tilted the metal so that the delicate silver engravings revealed themselves in the light. Embossed trumpet flowers curled among vines and leaves, as lush and bountiful as the garden of Eden, and just as artificial.

When Lapointe returned to his hotel, he intended to sleep for the rest of the day and depart the country next morning. Maybe he would go to Britain. He could practice new dialects of English. He could obscure his hideous identity behind a new mask. In the midst of this train of thought, he stepped into his room, and felt an immediate chill.

Someone was there. Lapointe withdrew his knife and kept his hand on the door as he searched the dark room. He didn’t see anyone, but his instincts screamed at him to run. He turned the door handle.

“Stay a while,” a voice commanded in Québécois French. “Let’s talk.”

Lapointe glared into the darkness. Before his eyes, a shape materialized, like smoke taking form. A thin man in a midnight blue suit leaned against the wall by the window. A balaclava of the same color obscured the intruder’s face, baring only his pale blue eyes. He balanced a long barrelled revolver in his gloved hand. Lazily, he swiveled the gun towards Lapointe.

Lapointe struggled to speak through his tight, dry throat. “What do you want?” he croaked.

“Raul Savelli.” The stranger assessed Lapointe’s tension upon hearing the name, tilting his masked head. “Don’t worry. I’m not here to avenge him. I’m the reason you could get to him at all. You didn’t think it was odd that he was alone?”

Lapointe’s head swam. He held the door for balance. “Who are you?”

“That’s not important. I’m here to talk about you, Emile Lapointe.” The stranger lowered the gun, though he kept his finger on the trigger.

“How do you know my name?”

“I know everything there is to know about you. I know that you were found at an orphanage as an infant and worked in a textile mill until you were ten, at which point you reunited with your father, a gypsy named Henri Lapointe.” The name brought tears to Lapointe’s eyes, which he struggled to blink away. “I know about Struthof and Baía.” Lapointe wanted to sink to his knees and scream until there was no voice left. “I know you’re an amateur prostitute, and a cheap one at that. And, as of tonight, I know you have the stomach to kill.”

Lapointe’s hand shook as he gripped the knife. The stranger’s particular knowledge could only mean one thing: Werner was behind this. “Get out,” he hissed.

“I’m afraid I can’t. My employers pay me well, and my current assignment is to retrieve you.”

Lapointe’s pulse raced as he sized up the stranger and his gun. He couldn’t possibly kill the man before he pulled the trigger. There was no escape. Unless… Lapointe bared his teeth and turned his knife on himself, pointing the blade at his throat.

“Go ahead,” the stranger yawned. “Orphan your son.”

“My—what?” Lapointe put Rita out of his mind long ago and resisted the pull of her memory. Their child was a concept, not a person.

The stranger reached into the pocket of his suit jacket and withdrew a photograph. He tossed it on the bed. Cautiously, Lapointe approached and took the picture in hand. The camera was positioned outside of Rita’s kitchen window. She held a baby in her arms. He was tiny for his age, but rambunctious. His arms splayed in the air as he flailed in Rita’s grip. Her expression was both exhausted and fond as she struggled to hold him still.

“His name is Jeremy,” said the stranger. “His mother already struggled to provide for seven boys on her own. How do you think she’s faring with eight?”

“That’s not my problem,” Lapointe denied, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“No? Then you won’t mind if my employers use him in their experiments.”

Lapointe lost control of his body. He saw himself charge across the room as if he was standing in the corner. The stranger was unwilling to shoot him, and simply cracked him across the temple with the gun when he got close, stepping outside the range of the slashing knife. He tutted as Lapointe dropped to the floor.

“Allow me to make this simple. You have two choices. Accompany me to New Mexico and accept a lucrative job offer that will allow you to provide for your son, or remain here and consign him to your place.”

Lapointe clutched his head and curled in a miserable ball on the floor, groaning insensibly. The stranger waited patiently for him to confirm what they both knew already: Lapointe was coming with him.

 

* * *

 

Oceans of battlescarred sand and rock formations surrounded the compound in Badlands, New Mexico. It appeared to be a sort of military operation, but all of the fighting remained on the base.

From a window above the field, Lapointe watched two color coded squadrons of identical soldiers fight and kill one another for no practical reason that he could discern. The men charged without fear of death. Burned, maimed, and dismembered bodies littered the ground and draped over the battlements. Men seized ammunition from the corpses of their fallen comrades, as replacements periodically returned to the fight from either side, emerging from either the wooden shacks or the sheet metal buildings that delineated the two groups. There seemed to be an endless supply of soldiers, and an endless supply of bullets, shells, and grenades to tear them apart.

“Hello, Emile.” Ludwig’s reflection appeared in the window. He approached Lapointe with his hands clasped behind his back and a guilty smile on his face.

“You are in your element, Aron,” Lapointe responded, watching his reflection. “Surrounded by death.”

Ludwig shook his head. “Their deaths are not permanent. I actually have you to thank for that. I made an important breakthrough when I regenerated your body.”

Lapointe gripped the butterfly knife at his side. Ludwig did not yet notice it in the reflection. “What was the point of giving me another chance if you were just going to take it away again?”

”I did not want to involve you,” Ludwig insisted. “Werner—”

“How could you go back to him?” Lapointe shouted. Ludwig backed away, and he advanced, wielding the knife. Ludwig held up his arms to defend himself and screamed in pain when Lapointe cut them open, stabbing again and again through the white sleeves of Ludwig’s lab coat. “This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it? Isn’t it!”

Ludwig kicked him in the chest with his boot, hurling him back against the wall. Lapointe raised the knife to lunge again, but Ludwig slammed into him, pinning Lapointe by the shoulders. Ludwig plunged his bleeding hand into his pocket and withdrew a syringe, which he struggled to uncap as Lapointe fought him. Lapointe stabbed Ludwig in the side before Ludwig finally injected him in the neck.

The fast-acting sedative blurred Lapointe’s vision and slackened his muscles. He was unable to pull the knife out of Ludwig, and he grasped weakly at the handle that still protuded from Ludwig’s flank. Ludwig caught him in his arms as his knees gave out, shushing him with an absurd fondness, as if Lapointe had not just attacked him. Lapointe tried to express how much he hated Ludwig, but his mouth wasn’t working. Soon, his eyes weren’t working, either.

When the sedative wore off and his senses returned, Lapointe woke in the familiar situation of being bound to a surface. He was horizontal, and the table beneath him was padded. A coppery, acrid smell clouded around his head, coloring the bright room with hazy vapor. At least he still had his clothing.

“There you are,” said Ludwig. Lapointe groggily turned his head. Ludwig sat in a nearby chair, surrounded by surgical implements. The tools confirmed Lapointe’s fear that he was in another laboratory, strapped to an operating table. Ludwig himself looked no worse for wear: he had exchanged his coat for a fresh one, the sleeves of which he rolled up to the elbow to exhibit his surprising lack of injury, as if Lapointe had never stabbed him at all. “Feeling better?”

Lapointe grunted, unwilling to admit that the vapor was improving his physical condition. The vapor streamed from a nozzle over the table, which attached to the arm of a machine that hummed with electricity. Coils jutted from the apparatus and streamed with wires. Red light tinged the vaporous emissions of the machine. Lapointe was sure that the mysterious healing latex could be found in its core.

“Now that you have calmed down, there is someone you should meet.” Ludwig stood from his chair and went to a door. Lapointe strained to watch him through the curtains in the operating room. Ludwig spoke softly through the open door, and after a moment’s silence, a small figure stepped through the threshold.

A clear plastic breathing mask obscured most of the child’s face. Waxy scar tissue covered their visible flesh, save for a small patch on the scalp which sprouted black, curly hair. They wore a rubber suit ringed with tubes that connected a panel in their chest to the mask. They had grown considerably since Brazil, and though they were bulky for their age, they hid shyly behind Ludwig’s long white coat. The wrinkled lids of their dark eyes squinted as they studied Lapointe.

“Another monstrous freak,” Lapointe said bitterly.

Fortunately, the child did not understand his French, though they sensed his anger. They cowered behind Ludwig. “Don’t say that,” admonished Ludwig. “You were incredible when you saved her life.”

“I would have let her die if I knew that you would just give her to Werner.”

“He took her!” Ludwig shouted, startling Lapointe with his abrupt mood swing. The child ran behind the door and timidly closed it. “Don’t you understand? She is the reason that I am here! I had my life, too! I was nearly finished with my degree, sending money to provide for her, when I received a photo and a threat.”

“From a masked Québécois,” guessed Lapointe, grimacing as he remembered the effectiveness of the threat against his own son.

“ _Ja._ He is one of the mercenaries fighting on the field, though you would not have seen him. They call him Ghost. The company uses him for its clandestine activities.”

“And what is Werner doing?”

“If you promise not to attack me again, I will show you.” Ludwig cautiously approached Lapointe and released him from the operating table. He jumped back quickly as Lapointe sat up. Lapointe glanced at the door, but the girl in the rubber suit remained hidden in the other room.

Ludwig crossed the infirmary and stood in front of the unremarkable concrete wall. He removed his glove and palmed the joints between the white and green bricks. Light spread below his fingers, activating a hidden panel that hissed and separated from the wall. Stairs descended into darkness beyond the door.

They entered the stairwell, activating motion sensing lights on each level. Lapointe counted three sublevels before they reached a reinforced steel door at the bottom. Ludwig entered a code into a keypad, deliberately standing in front of it to mask the numbers from Lapointe. Numerous locks clattered and spun, admitting them through.

Ludwig cautiously pushed the door open and checked inside the room before he entered. Fluorescent tubes flickered overhead, illuminating the large, warehouse-sized space with cold blue light.

Lapointe recognized the rows of liquid vats instantly. Their design had reached its third iteration. The glass cases looked sleeker and sturdier than ever, and two tidy rows of piping serviced each, outletting to individual control panels with gleaming switches, dials, and buttons. A metal catwalk serviced the top level of the looming space, allowing access to pipes that extended along the walls and ceiling.

At least twenty vats filled the warehouse floor. Lapointe counted ten nude, inert bodies preserved within the fluid. A still copy of Ludwig was interred beside a copy of Werner. The other eight vessels, Lapointe presumed, were replicas of the mercenaries, although he was sure that there had been more than eight fighting in the field at one time. One, he was surprised to see, was a woman. He continued to scan the vats until he saw a remarkably large specimen, whose appearance haunted him.

It wasn’t Jung. Jung was dead, murdered by Ludwig’s knife in Brazil. The face was wrong. Lapointe would have recognized Jung’s face, for how often he had to stare into it and endure its cruel rictus smiles. Still, there was something familiar in the inert brutality of the figure, the imposing stature, the predatory brow—

“It’s not him,” Ludwig confirmed, touching Lapointe’s shoulder. Lapointe seized Ludwig’s wrist and tried to break his arm. Ludwig yelped and ripped himself free, dodging to place the vats between them. “I told you, it’s not him!”

“Liar,” Lapointe insisted. He palmed his pockets for the butterfly knife, but Ludwig had stolen it from him when he was unconscious. He jabbed his finger at Ludwig instead. “You helped Werner bring him back, just like me.”

“It is a different body! A different brain! It has been augmented, but there is nothing—almost nothing—”

“Only the soul.” Lapointe knew he was right when Ludwig failed to answer. “A familiar,” sneered Lapointe. “The slave of a witch.”

“More so than you.” Ludwig glared at the man who wasn’t Jung. “He is easier to control this way. He doesn’t know what he is. He is obsessed with fighting, like the rest of them. It is a convenient distraction.”

“Do you know what he does to children?” Lapointe demanded, his voice echoing in the cavernous basement. “Is that why you hide the little freak in the operating room?”

“He will not touch her!” Ludwig shouted back. “I made a deal with Werner. As long as I remain here, she is safe.”

“You are an idiot if you trust his word!”

“He has complete control over the beast.”

“Supposedly, you have control over me, and yet I was able to slice your arms to ribbons.”

Ludwig’s anger drained from his face, revealing his contrition. “I deserved that,” he said as he stared at the ground. “If I compel you to follow an order, it must be…” He searched for the word in French. “Heartfelt.”

“Assuming you have a heart at all, after the child-killing and human experimentation,” Lapointe shot back. He roamed over to Ludwig’s inert twin, which floated inside of its glass tomb. “Then again, you seem to have an endless supply of hearts now. If I killed you here, would this thing, this copy, rise from the dead to replace you?”

A spark of joy returned to Ludwig as he seized the opportunity to explain his creation. “Not exactly. You see, it is not the copy. _I_ am the copy.” Ludwig paused for effect, but Lapointe could only stare blankly, uncomprehending. “If you were to succeed in killing me—that is, the me who stands before you—the system will scan and replace the body.”

“Let’s have a demonstration.” Lapointe snatched at Ludwig’s coat, but as Ludwig evaded his grip and dodged between the vats, lights suddenly flashed in the center of a control panel. The two paused to watch as fluid surged and bubbled within the vat that contained the sole female mercenary.

“Look! One of them has died!” Ludwig eagerly distracted from Lapointe’s attempts to kill him, and raced to the wall. Concrete framed what had appeared to be useless windows in the basement wall. Ludwig pressed a button, activating lights that revealed what lurked behind the window.

In the hidden room, a row of vertically oriented vats churned with fluid that gushed from the network of pipes. The blue-tinted liquid within the vats ran clear at first, until the pipes emitted a red mist that swirled and strung together millions of tiny fragments. Increasingly large chunks adhered to one another, as if magnified, in the center of the whirlpool, until Lapointe saw the beginnings of an eye, a leg, a head.

When the process completed, the female mercenary’s exact copy floated upright, as real as if she had stepped into the vat herself. Fine mists within the vat encompassed her naked body, twisting around her stocky frame with blue string. The strings knitted a camouflage boilersuit and a respirator mask. Somehow, Lapointe was more astounded to see the machine make clothes than bodies.

As soon as the mercenary was fully uniformed, light flashed within the vat, and her body vanished. “Teleported,” Ludwig said, as if that explained everything. “I can not take credit for that part—we work with the engineers, the father and the son—but everything else—well, I told you how I learned from your resurrection.” He tripped over words in his excitement, as happy as Lapointe had ever seen him. “We call it _Respawn._ ”

“I call it an abomination.” Lapointe searched for his cigarette case, and was happy to see that Ludwig had not taken it from him. He faced an empty corner as he smoked, attempting to cope in silence with everything he had just seen and learned. Of course, he had endless questions, but asking them required more conversation with Ludwig, and more confrontation with the unsettling truth. The same unholy process that birthed Lapointe was now so streamlined as to be commonplace. Death was not permanent, and a copy of a person was as good as the original. One could live an entirely different sort of life with that contingency plan, and yet, with the threat against his son to keep him in check, Lapointe had no freedom to use this “Respawn” to his advantage.

He would have to bide his time until circumstances changed.

Lapointe inhaled the cigarette as deeply as he could and expelled a massive cloud. A corona of smoke lingered around his head as he turned to Ludwig, who pretended to fiddle with the machines. “Well, what are you waiting for? Make me a copy.”

Ludwig’s crooked glasses slipped down his nose. A wide, deranged smile festered in the center of his face.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: Suicide. I am mentioning this specifically because it wasn't in the tags before.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to alidextrous, who has provided invaluable German language help, and whose comments got me back on track after an unannounced hiatus. Thank you so much for your patience.

That night, after the mercenaries ceased fire and vacated the corporate battlefield, Ludwig stole out in the moonlight and piled corpses into a wheelbarrow. He heaped disembodied limbs on top of crumpled torsos and slackjawed heads. He shoveled loose guts into the gaps between the bodies, and he wheeled the wobbling, dripping mound of meat back to the basement, to be transformed through the meat grinder that was Respawn.

Lapointe accompanied him to the field. He followed at a distance, refusing to help with the gruesome work, smoking the last of his cigarettes. Ludwig helpfully informed him that cartons of cigarettes arrived weekly from their weapons supplier, Mann Co.

Ludwig explained that Team Fortress Industries had a unique corporate structure. TFI was the parent company of both Builders League United, or BLU; and Reliable Excavation and Demolition, or RED. Mann Co., a separate entity based in Australia, supplied weapons, ammunition, and headgear.

“Why did RED and BLU hire mercenaries to attack each other if they are owned by the same company?” asked Lapointe.

“Consistent warfare creates a uniquely rich experimental environment,” Ludwig answered. “We have made incredible scientific progress with Respawn and other projects.”

“You and Werner,” Lapointe growled.

Ludwig halted. He lowered the wheelbarrow to the ground and wiped sweat from his brow with his bloody sleeve. “Werner has changed his identity. He goes by ‘Doc’ now. The mercenaries all think that he is an American. From Hollywood, no less. The idiots trust him.”

Lapointe remembered Werner’s conversational prowess with French. The doctor could have passed for a native speaker. According to Ludwig, Werner was a true polyglot, mastering English as well. “How absurd. What do they think of you, then?”

Ludwig laughed bitterly. “They think _ I’m _ the Nazi.”

“They’re not wrong.” Lapointe flicked his final cigarette on top of the pile of corpses. “Do you still have the dagger with the swastika?” Ludwig nodded. “And you still wear your jackboots.” Ludwig shuffled his feet behind the wheelbarrow. “You even carry yourself like a soldier. I see how you click your heels. Why do you continue the charade?”

Ludwig shrugged his shoulders up to his ears. For a moment, Lapointe saw the gawky young man in the SS uniform again. “Pretending to be my enemy has always kept me safe. These mercenaries are no different from the thugs in the Gestapo. If they didn’t think I was a dangerous mad scientist, they would tear me apart.”

“So that’s why we’re out here collecting corpses in the dead of night—to avoid our coworkers.”

“Correct.” Ludwig assessed the bounty of his labor. “Speaking of corpses, I think we have enough material to make your copy.”

They returned to the lab, where Ludwig emptied the wheelbarrow full of jumbled limbs and torsos into a large vat of acid. Lapointe shuddered as he watched the skin and fat bubble away from the bone, remembering how Emile’s body had been dissolved from existence by Jung.

After the bodies had been dissolved and pumped into circulation through the network of pipes, Ludwig crossed over to the rows of inert mercenaries in glass cases. He opened an empty canister and directed Lapointe to surrender himself inside.

“The system will scan your body and produce a copy,” said Ludwig.

“So, _ I’m _ going to stay in there?” asked Lapointe, pointing at the vat. “My copy will be the one to walk out of this room and continue my business.”

“Yes. Do not be frightened.”

“I’m not,” sighed Lapointe. He lowered himself into the warm liquid that sloshed within the glass chamber. “I’m already dead.”

Ludwig injected Lapointe in the neck with sedative. Lapointe lay still as the needle penetrated his artery. Then, Ludwig carefully closed the glass lid over Lapointe, entombing him in the chamber.

Lapointe’s heart thudded slowly as the fluid rose around him. He expected the searing bite of acid, but the fluid was harmless and pleasantly warm. By the time it flooded his nostrils and filled his lungs, he was sleeping too soundly to suffer the suffocation.

Lapointe, himself a copy of Emile, became the basis for a copy of Lapointe, who was a copy of a copy. Lapointe had always been hollow inside. He knew for a fact that he was an empty shell, replicated from a facsimile body that had been grown in a vat from a fragment of old, dead bone. He was two degrees separated from his humanity.

When the Respawn process completed, Lapointe II, or Emile III, exited the laboratory with Ludwig, leaving Lapointe I, or Emile II, at rest in the glass vat among the dormant mercenaries.

Lapointe brushed his hands over the pinstriped blue suit that the machine had woven for him. It was a replica of the clothing his original body had been wearing, although Ludwig told him that Respawn could dress the copies in various clothing as needed. Lapointe had purchased the original suit in Boston. He had seduced Rita in it. He had conceived his son in it. 

The memories were too painful. Lapointe resolved to replace his entire wardrobe. With the salary from his new job at TF, he could finally commission the suits that he had been designing in his head for years.

Ludwig reached the laboratory door at the top of the stairwell. He looked through the glass window, and started in surprise. “Darling,” he blurted in English.

Lapointe couldn’t believe what he was hearing. A pet name? “Don’t call me that,” he snapped.

“No, it’s Charles Darling,” Ludwig said, gesturing at the window. “From the board of directors at TF. He is in the laboratory with Werner.”

Lapointe gripped the handrail and sat on the stairs. He wasn’t prepared to confront Werner again. “Go and meet them. Pretend I’m not here,” he implored Ludwig.

“They know.” Ludwig grimaced. “They will be looking for you.”

Lapointe scrubbed his hands over his face and breathed deeply. Ludwig sat on the stairs nearby, waiting in patient silence. Finally, Lapointe stood, and they went together to the door.

Werner, dressed in a white lab coat over a blue combat uniform, stood in the center of the laboratory. He clasped his hands behind his back and conversed in English with Charles Darling, a broad-shouldered man who wore a silk jacket and gripped an ornate, decorative cane.

Werner’s cold blue eyes cut to Lapointe as the door opened. “Emile Lapointe,” he announced in English. Werner’s accent, Lapointe had to admit, sounded remarkably like the nasal register of a midwestern American. He even mispronounced Lapointe’s name as an American typically would, Em-eel. “Come meet your benefactor, Charles Darling.”

Lapointe refused to approach. Ludwig squirmed anxiously at his side, pretending to stare at the floor. Lapointe wondered how much Ludwig knew about Lapointe’s role in the company.

“You have Mr. Darling to thank for your job, Emile,” Werner said. Lapointe flinched. Even in the unfamiliar context, his given name instantly transported Lapointe back to Struthof, where he was a starving youth desperate for succor. “I would have let the mercenaries use you for target practice, but Charles had a better idea.”

“He looks older than you led me to believe,” Darling complained, studying Lapointe from head to toe. Darling spoke with the received pronunciation of the British upper class. “Terribly skinny. Open your mouth, boy.” He walked towards Lapointe, swinging his cane.

Lapointe backed away from Darling. Werner cleared his throat. “Have you forgotten the conditions of your employment?”

Lapointe remembered, of course: when he arrived at the TF facility in New Mexico, he signed everything that the Quebecois recruiter put in front of him. The hundred-page contract was entirely in English, which Lapointe could have read, had he not been overwhelmed with impotent misery at the idea of signing away his freedom to protect his estranged family’s safety. He only remembered the most important clause, which stated that if he did not comply with any instruction, he would void the contract and relinquish his son. Lapointe had expected to join the mercenaries in the battlefield, but he was not surprised to learn that his job required a different type of service. He should have known that he couldn’t escape his past as a prostitute.

Darling seized Lapointe’s chin in the midst of his reverie. Darling’s soft fingers pried open Lapointe’s lips, revealing his yellow, cracked teeth, which had been damaged by years of malnutrition and smoking. “Disgusting,” Darling sneered.

“We’ll replace the teeth,” Werner said.

Darling squeezed the joint of Lapointe’s jaw, forcing his mouth open. Lapointe hissed in pain as Darling studied his rotting molars. “You certainly must,” Darling said. “I shan’t put my cock in this sewer.”

Lapointe bit Darling’s finger. Darling yowled in pain and ripped his hand away, tearing his skin in the process. “Little bastard!” Darling raised his cane. Lapointe shielded his head with his arms in anticipation of the blow.

Nothing happened. Lapointe peeked through his arms.

Ludwig gripped the cane, glaring at Darling. “Treat him well,” he threatened, pronouncing the words slowly and deliberately in English, “or suffer the consequences.”

Darling chuckled. He grasped the cane with both hands and jerked it loose with one powerful motion. “Keep this one under control,” he said to Werner.

Werner snapped his fingers and pointed to his side. Ludwig came to heel. “It seems that my assistant has forgotten the breadth of your privilege, Charles,” Werner said. “Perhaps a demonstration is in order.”

“Right you are.” Darling glowered at Lapointe. “Strip.”

Lapointe groaned internally as he fumbled with the buttons on his jacket. Why did Ludwig have to grow a spine at the worst possible time? Didn’t he remember how things worked? Now Lapointe would pay for Ludwig’s transgression.

“Don’t rush,” Darling ordered. “I was told that you have experience. Prove that you are worth your price.”

Lapointe’s face burned as he opened his jacket and slid the garment from his narrow shoulders, revealing the bony protrusions through his shirt. He chose his clothing deliberately to improve his scrawny silhouette, and dismantling the illusion piece by piece bared his insecurities to Darling’s appraising eye. It did not help that Ludwig and Werner stood and watched his humiliation, although Ludwig stared at the ground and pretended not to see.

“Just throw it on the floor,” Darling snapped when Lapointe paused to place his suit jacket on a chair. “Cheap, garish garbage.”

A knot formed in Lapointe’s throat. His eyes grew hot and wet as he shrugged his suspenders off his shoulders and unbuttoned his waistcoat and shirt. His ribs showed through the skin of his chest and back, and his hard-won pectoral muscles seemed smaller than ever in the center of his spare torso, fringed by his prominent clavicle.

“Is this a joke?” Darling demanded, turning to Werner. “Emaciated, terrified—he’s not worth the paper for the check.”

“I agree.” Werner glared at Lapointe. “I’ll have the boy delivered from Boston.”

“No!” Lapointe fell to his knees before Darling. “Allow me,” he said, forcing a seductive purr into his trembling voice, as he reached for Darling’s crotch.

Darling cracked the cane across Lapointe’s face, sprawling him across the floor. Lapointe groaned and grasped his mouth, tonguing his loosened incisor. “I said that I don’t want your filthy mouth on me. Now, get up and remove the rest of that dreadful ensemble you call a suit, so that I may punish you for wasting my time.”

Lapointe spat blood and staggered to his feet. The throbbing pain in his mouth spiked through his chest and shot hotly into his groin. He stared into Darling’s eyes as he unbuckled his cracked leather belt and opened his trousers, sliding the material down his bony hips to reveal his flushing, swelling cock. Lapointe twisted his slim thighs and dropped the trousers with gradual, dancing motions.

“Better,” Darling affirmed. He stood with his weight evenly distributed on his feet, hands clasping the glittering gem head of his cane. His shoulders wriggled like a big cat preparing to pounce. “Remove everything. Turn around, bend over, and hold your ankles with your hands.”

Lapointe kicked his cheap leather shoes away and unfastened the garters on his socks. Fully nude, and shivering in the cool air of the laboratory, he obediently bared his backside to Darling. Blood rushed to his head in the humbling position. He clenched his aching jaw and tried not to get lost in the memories of Emile’s death on the sacrificial cross.

Darling’s smooth, aristocratic hand palmed Lapointe’s buttocks, pinching the nigh-existent fat. “No padding to speak of,” Darling remarked. “This is going to hurt. But you like that, don’t you?” He reached between Lapointe’s legs, stroking over his swollen shaft and plump sac. Lapointe hissed; his cock twitched in desperation at the maddeningly light pressure.

Darling laughed at him. “You may be worth something after all.” Darling whipped the cane across the back of Lapointe’s thighs, throwing him to his hands and knees. “Return to your position! You will count each stroke, thank me, and ask for another,” Darling instructed him. Lapointe bit back a curse. When Werner would beat him, Lapointe only had to cry and wait for it to be over. Darling’s sadism was more particular. “Faster,” Darling ordered, caning Lapointe in the face when he struggled to rise from his knees.

Lapointe grunted and spat out the tooth that Darling had loosened previously. Blood trailed from his mouth and dripped past his eyes as he shakily folded himself in half and clutched his ankles. He squeezed his eyes shut and tensed his muscles, but nothing softened the blow that fell next across his ass.

“One,” Lapointe whined. “Thank you. May I have another?”

“Thank you,  _ sir. _ ” Darling whipped him again. “Start over.”

Lapointe swayed from the force of the strike and planted his feet further apart to gain more stability. “One. Thank you, sir. May I have another?”

“You may have twenty. If you’re a good boy, I’ll give you something afterwards to sate your little cunt.” Lapointe’s entire body clenched at the thought, and Darling chuckled. “So hungry for a buggering,” he said, prodding between Lapointe’s buttocks with the wooden end of his cane.

Lapointe’s cockhead painted a thin, sticky trail across his stomach. He hated himself for being so blatantly aroused. His erection bobbed with every blow from the cane, beading with precum as he counted his lashes and thanked Darling for the beating.

“Two. Thank you, sir. May I have another?” The heavy wood bludgeoned the back of Lapointe’s legs. Lapointe could feel thick bruises spreading under his skin. “Three. Thank you, sir. May I have another?”

Darling alternated the strength of the blows to keep Lapointe guessing. The third was barely a tap. The fourth knocked Lapointe to the ground. With a nasty smile, Darling ordered him to start over.

Lapointe focused all of his energy on breathing and maintaining the increasingly difficult stance. He wept, and he trembled, but he did not fall again. He counted five, ten, and fifteen blows, speaking through his clenched and aching teeth. The pain was unbearable. He had no choice but to bear it. 

Darling intentionally caught him in the balls with the cane on the twentieth blow. Lapointe screeched and swayed. He struggled to contain his nausea. “Twenty!” he sobbed. “Please, sir, please, may I have another?”

“I think you’ve had enough,” Darling growled, stepping towards him. He palmed Lapointe’s abused backside, appreciating the waves of heat that rolled from the battered flesh, and reached between his legs to appraise his cock. “You loved it. Degenerate.”

Lapointe sniveled and swallowed his spit and blood, gagging on his own drool as his head hung upside down. Darling was right: in spite of his pain and humiliation, or perhaps because of it, Lapointe was still squirming with need. He humped Darling’s hand, rocking his balls into his palm.

Darling squeezed his sac and twisted until Lapointe shrieked. “Behave.” He slapped Lapointe’s ass, aggravating the bone-deep bruises. “Because I am generous, I will not withhold your reward.”

Lapointe whimpered his gratitude as Darling spit on his hole and spread him open with a hand on either buttock. The bowels of Lapointe’s freshly created body were clean, but Darling did not use his fingers or his cock to fuck him. Instead, he forced the wooden end of his cane into Lapointe, distending his delicate anal canal around the blunt tip and thick shaft. Lapointe yelped in shock as the cane squeezed against his prostate, crushing out his climax with brute force. Long strings of cum shot from Lapointe’s desperate prick into his own face and mouth, burning the bloody gap in his gums.

Darling withdrew his cane and wiped it clean with Lapointe’s discarded shirt. “On your knees.” Lapointe groaned in relief as he was finally allowed to collapse to the ground. He slumped forward on his elbows, panting raggedly, consumed with post-orgasmic regret. A wet trail of blood drained down the back of his thigh.

“You could have found a prettier one,” Darling remarked to Werner, “but I suppose he will do.”

“The teeth will be no trouble to fix,” Werner assured Darling, affecting the enthusiasm of a salesman. “And you can do anything to him, absolutely anything. My assistant has ensured that death is no obstacle.” Beside Werner, Ludwig cringed with guilt. “He will be in better shape by the end of the week.”

“See that he is.” Darling withdrew a wad of cash and dropped loose bills on Lapointe, scattering them in the puddle of his drool. “Buy yourself a nicer suit.”

Werner chuckled and motioned for Darling to join him outside of the infirmary. The moment the door closed, Ludwig attempted to help Lapointe stand.

“Leave me,” Lapointe hissed in French, striking Ludwig’s hands away. He was in too much pain to get up of his own power. He lowered his forehead to the ground, shuddering with the dry remnants of his tears.

The floor rumbled underneath him. Ludwig grunted as he swung the nozzle of the large, mist-dispensing machine towards Lapointe. The latex within the chamber of the machine activated with a bright glow, and the healing mist surrounded Lapointe, leeching his pain away. He twisted his neck to look at his backside and saw that the welts had vanished. Nearly all evidence of the prior act was gone, except for the thin film of Lapointe’s seed smeared on the linoleum, and the dried blood on his thighs.

Lapointe shoved his sticklike legs back into his trousers and stood unsteadily. Removing his pain was not the same as returning his energy. He could barely walk. Ludwig stepped forward to aid him. For the second time, Lapointe shoved him aside. “I don’t need your help!”

Ludwig brandished the nozzle of his healing mechanism. “But I can heal you. You never have to suffer, no matter what happens to you.”

“I’m not suffering,” claimed Lapointe. “I loved it.”

Ludwig, though bemused, did not try to argue. He deactivated the machine. “You can sleep in one of these beds,” he said, indicating the infirmary cots. “Draw the curtain. I will leave you alone.” 

Lapointe was supposed to have a bunk assigned to him at the base, but Ludwig correctly assessed that Lapointe couldn’t walk across the building in his condition. Before Ludwig exited the room, he carefully placed Lapointe’s folding knife on the nearest cot, returning the weapon that he had stolen when Lapointe first arrived.

Lapointe seized the white curtains around one of the cots and dragged the shade along the pole, shielding himself in a fabric cubicle. He lay in the stiff cot and tried to sleep. When he couldn’t keep his eyes closed, he masturbated, focusing on his fresh degradation. The shame of admitting his masochism was almost as effective as pain, but the dull, emotional ache in his chest didn’t have the same impact as the throbbing welts and bruises. Lapointe sharpened his humiliation to a fine point. Darling put him in his place, and Lapointe was grateful for it. He had struggled for too long against his own nature when everyone could see it plainly in him. Lapointe was a fuckdoll brought back from the dead to service his employers. All of the pretense about blackmailing him with his son was simply a formality. Hadn’t Lapointe placed himself in the same situation when he had his freedom? He could have gone anywhere and done anything with his life, and he chose to spend years a violent relationship because he craved the hateful, rough sex.

Lapointe cursed as he failed to maintain an erection. If only Ludwig hadn’t healed him, he could have brought himself to completion. Lapointe palmed his cock stubbornly, grinding his teeth. He stuck his tongue into the smooth gap of his missing incisor. The broken tooth healed completely, and fresh gums shielded the root, denying Lapointe the satisfaction of tormenting the painful nerve.

The curtain swayed. “Go away,” growled Lapointe. He looked below the curtain’s hem for Ludwig’s boots, but saw instead the tiny feet of a child. It was the Brazilian girl, emerging from her hiding place. Lapointe guiltily withdrew his hand from his trousers. In his panic, his pulse raced, and blood shot to his cock.

The child’s feet vanished. Lapointe stared down at his stiffening length in horror. The formerly limp flesh was now tumescent and pulsating. He couldn’t bear to touch himself, and yet his arousal churned in his veins. How could he have reacted so strongly to the mere presence of a child? What was wrong with him?

_ You really were his son. _

Raul’s last words echoed in Lapointe’s head. He truly was Henri’s son: a lustful, childfucking gypsy coward. Emile had died before he reached full maturity. Now, it seemed that Lapointe was old enough to awaken the same unspeakable hunger that drove Henri to make a whore of his son. Lapointe was the same breed, the same sinner, the same predator. All of his sexual depravities and abnormalities branched from the same seed. Lapointe had never met his own son, Jeremy. What if he reacted to the baby with arousal when he held it in his arms?

Lapointe shuddered. His cock jutted like a dagger between his thighs, undeniable evidence of his perversion. He couldn’t bear to live this way. Supporting Jeremy with his new job would be meaningless if he merely went on to ruin the child’s life with his predilections. He resolved to do what Henri should have done a long time ago.

Lapointe extended his left hand, baring the green-tinged veins in his wrist. He unfolded his knife and pressed until the thin skin split. His eyes blurred with tears as he drove the blade more deeply into his arm, gouging the artery. Blood spurted, hot and wet, on his neck and face. 

Shamefully, his cock pulsed harder than ever, greedily reserving the last vestiges of Lapointe’s blood in his lower body. He sobbed as he gripped himself in his sticky palm and squeezed his shaft with his right hand. Even in the throes of agony, he burned with an erotic desire for punishment. The more he internalized his evil nature, the more he thirsted for redemption in the form of suffering.

In the center of a spreading red lake, Lapointe tried to remove the source of his perversion. His hand felt weak and numb above his wounded wrist, but he only needed to hold his cock still. He ground his teeth together, raised the knife, and slashed the blade across the base of his genitals, intending to sever them from his body in one stroke.

He couldn’t complete the task. The blade stabbed below his pubic bone and disappeared to the handle, at which point Lapointe lost control of his body. He seized up and curled like a pillbug around the wound. He should have screamed, or cried, but the pain was so intense that his very lungs were paralyzed. The solid metal of his blade stuck stiffly within him, a cruel guard beside his contemptible cock.

Lapointe’s rapid, shallow breaths stirred the surface of the crimson pool in which he lay. His cheek rested on the floor and blood bubbled on the side of his mouth. He saw his reflection in the surface, Emile’s face, Henri’s face, the face of a cockroach, a coward, a concubine, a corpse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be one more chapter after this one (possibly two). I will try to update more promptly. Thanks for reading.


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